On April 30, 1993 during a quarterfinal tennis match with Magdalena Maleeva in Hamburg in which Monica Seles was leading 6–4, 4–3, Günter Parche, an obsessed fan of Steffi Graf, ran from the middle of the crowd to the edge of the court during a break between games and stabbed Seles with a boning knife between her shoulder blades. Although her physical injuries took only a few weeks to heal, she did not return to competitive tennis for more than two years.

