Seles, nearly five years her junior. Very quickly, Seles
dominated the women’s game; in 1991 and 1992,
Seles won twenty-two titles, including compiling a
remarkable 55-1 record in grand-slam play. Like
Agassi, her play was unconventional, often inelegant
and improvisational. Against the cool calculation of
Graf’s power game, Seles brought excitement to the
game (as in her signature two-note grunt whenever
she served); given her easy charm, her self-deprecat-
ing irreverence, and striking good looks, she quickly
became (like Agassi) a fan favorite, eclipsing Graf as
Agassi had Sampras.
That promising rivalry, however, ended abruptly
on April 30, 1993, when Seles was knifed in the back
during a quarterfinal match for the Citizen Cup in
Hamburg, Germany, by a demented local Graf fan
who saw eliminating Seles as the only way to ensure
Graf’s return to prominence. Much to Seles’s dis-
may, even as her game struggled to return to its
championship form, her attacker never served any
jail time but rather was institutionalized. Ironically,
the fan accomplished his agenda: Graf went on to
dominate the decade while Seles, who was only age
nineteen at the time of the attack, never found her
game. But if Graf collected the titles, Seles captured
the imagination. Her poise and dignity during the
long recovery, physical and psychological, gave her
the luster of tragic grace, which made her the de-
cade’s most inspirational figure in tennis.
Impact In the 1990’s, clearly, tennis was in a state of
change, unable to decide what sort of game it would
be. It seemed that fans had to choose between preci-
sion and power on one hand and passion and inten-
sity on the other. In Graf and Sampras, the decade
saw two of the greatest players in the sport’s his-
tory—yet neither manifested the charisma to be-
come the sport’s ambassador. The next generation
of rising stars—most notably Venus and Serena Wil-
liams and Roger Federer—would bring tennis both
precision and passion and thus move the game into a
post-1990’s boom era.
Further Reading
Bauman, Paul.Agassi and Ecstasy. Santa Monica,
Calif.: Bonus, 2002. Career study that offers care-
ful analyses of the Wimbledon and U.S. Open
championships against Sampras.
Branham, H. A.Sampras: A Legend in the Works. Santa
Monica, Calif.: Bonus, 1996. From the critical per-
spective of Sampras’s initial impact, this book as-
sesses how Sampras’s uncontroversial style and
methodical play affected the game positively and
negatively.
Fein, Paul.Tennis Confidential: Today’s Greatest Players,
Matches, Controversies. Washington, D.C.: Potomac
Books, 2002. Strong emphasis on the 1990’s. In-
cludes biographies and career highlights of all
the decade’s dominant players as well as the diffi-
cult relationship between the players and the
fans.
Jenkins, Sally. “The Sorry State of Tennis.”Sports Il-
lustrated, May 9, 1994, 78-88. Controversial (and
influential) cover story on the difficulties the
game faced. Includes harsh assessments of play-
ers and the tour organization. Makes ten specific
recommendations for saving the game.
Seles, Monica, with Nancy Ann Richardson.Monica:
From Fear to Victor y. New York: HarperCollins,- Powerful testimony to Seles’s recovery from
the on-court attack. Includes her ideas about the
new power era and about her relationship with
Graf.
Joseph Dewey
See also Agassi, Andre; Sports; Sampras, Pete;
Seles, Monica. Term limits
Definition Legal restrictions on the number of
terms that a member of a legislative body may
serve
During the 1990’s, several states limited the number of
years that a member of the legislature could serve. In addi-
tion, efforts were made to limit the number of terms that a
member of Congress could serve. Advocates argued that
term limits led to a more democratic political process. Oppo-
nents contened that term limits deprived legislatures of
members with useful experience and increased the costs of
elections.
The effort to impose term limits was a major political
movement of the 1990’s. California, Colorado, and
Oklahoma got the ball rolling in 1990 by imposing
terms limits on members of their state legislatures.
Subsequently, eighteen other states adopted term
limits. State supreme courts in Wyoming, Washing-
ton, Oregon, and Massachusetts threw out term-
limit laws, and the state legislatures of Idaho andThe Nineties in America Term limits 843