IT’S ALL RELATIVE

She has been told she’s a has-been. Her grunts have been measured for their decibel level. She has been called fat. She has been counseled to wear different tennis dresses. In one tabloid newspaper, Monica Seles’ head was pasted on the body of a middle-aged woman with dimpled, cellulite-ridden thighs.

Most hurtful was the insinuation that, with her father battling cancer, Seles is taking refuge in food.

That was the Wimbledon experience for Seles earlier this month and what the winner of nine Grand Slam tournament titles faces every time she goes to England and faces the tabloid press.

This year the treatment of Seles, who lost in the third round at Wimbledon, was remarkable for its viciousness.

“For me, the highlight came when I got stabbed [in April of 1993], and one of them wrote that I got stabbed on purpose, to get more publicity,” she said, with a wry laugh. “When I read that article, I knew there was never going to be a good one about me over there.

“After that, I said, ‘That’s it.’ First, there was my game, then there was my grunting, then there was my weight. All the time they find something. I understand that’s how they are going to be with me. I’m not expecting anything better from them.”

Putting Wimbledon behind her, and beginning her hard-court season schedule, Seles, ranked third, advanced Wednesday at the Toshiba Tennis Classic, defeating Ai Sugiyama of Japan, 6-4, 6-4.

Relaxing in the sunny living room of a villa at the La Costa Resort, Seles spoke candidly about her dealings with the self-appointed weight police in London, the effect of those stories on other players and the slow coming to terms with cancer striking her father and coach, Karolj Seles.

Seles long has been a tabloid favorite. She’s accustomed to the cruelty. At 23, she is comfortable with herself and, although the comments sting, she’s better equipped to deal with them than the teenagers who are the tour’s emerging stars.

“There’s such a fixation with weight,” said Seles, who has close friends who have had eating disorders. “It’s important to be healthy, but it shouldn’t be this fixation. It’s too much pressure on women and girls.

“It’s sad, what they [tabloids] do. When you are young, you want to make everybody happy and you take everything personally. You want to live up to everybody’s expectations. If you look thin and you look good, you must be a great person and we all love you.

“In general, society looks at it like that. You look in the mirror and you are a size 2 and you think you’re fat. You get into bad things just to make society happy with the way you look or the way you talk or whatever is expected of women. It’s not right.”

For once, Seles was not the only target. Martina Hingis was criticized for what was perceived as her weight gain and was the center of attention from tabloid photographers competing to get shots of her underwear. Another 16-year-old, Anna Kournikova, also was photographed in provocative poses.

The prurient nature of the photographs and the constant attention paid to the women players’ weight brought a condemnation from the British minister of sport, who called the coverage “sexist and bordering on pornographic.”

“There was a lot of talk in the women’s locker room, all these pictures of Martina’s knickers, Anna’s short skirt,” Seles said. “This year, I think they went too far with all of that. It was the focus of the women’s Wimbledon.

“These are 15- and 16-year-olds, these are babies. The stuff they were writing about is not right. [Kournikova], she’s 16, she’s a child. You can write those stories after she’s 18. Even if she enjoys that spotlight, you have to be careful. It’s a different mind at 16 than at 21. They aren’t fully developed.”

Seles didn’t tell the tabloids, nor did they ask, that her fitness level now has to be managed between visits to hospitals and doctors. Like tennis, her physical condition is important but not her only priority.

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Seles’ father had overcome prostate cancer and one bout with stomach cancer more than two years ago. He was told the stomach cancer would not return, but it did and with a vengeance.

When it came, it came quickly. Karolj Seles felt a growth in his abdomen, and this year on New Year’s Day he went, in pain, to an emergency room near their home in Sarasota, Fla. He was told he needed to see a specialist.

The next day he flew to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where he was told his rare form of fast-growing stomach cancer was advanced and widespread. He has undergone seven rounds of chemotherapy. There will be no more.

“That’s not going to cure it,” Seles said. “It’s a matter of prolonging his life. I know what the reality is. It’s not great. This year there were so many changes that came on so suddenly. I’m still struggling with the day-to-day adjustments. I think I’m getting there, but I’m still a long way from where I want to be.

“I know that I haven’t practiced this year as much as I used to. My mind has been on other places. I know that when I’m not giving full attention to something, the results will not be the same. That’s what I have to decide: how much I want to give. I do want to be back. Slowly, I have to find that balance.”

She wants to play well again, not only for herself and for her father, but for her fans who have remained loyal. “Sometimes I wish I were playing better tennis because I feel as if I’m letting my fans down,” she said. “I think why can’t I do better for them. They’ve been supporting me.”

Seles is going through much the same thing as Pete Sampras did last year, when his coach and friend, Tim Gullikson, was ill with brain cancer. Gullikson died last spring and Sampras received an enormous amount of public sympathy and goodwill. His losses were understood to have come in the context of a player still in mourning.

Oddly, Seles--who is facing the loss of not only her coach and best friend but also her father--has not been treated with the same consideration. Not only that, but Seles’ continued participation on the tour has been questioned.

“Am I doing the right thing or should I be back home and spending that time with Dad? I go back and forth,” she said. “I really don’t have the answer. I do know my dad wants me to play, he tells me that. I wish I could spend more time with him.

“Deep in my heart, when I go to sleep, I know I did the right thing that day. I know I can find the balance of practicing more, but I still want to spend the most time I can with my dad and mom and be there if they need anything.

“Emotionally, it’s hard to totally exclude what’s going on and my dad’s struggle. I can’t. Just because tennis is not going very well, doesn’t mean my other life isn’t going very well. A lot of time when I was playing some great tennis, outside of tennis I was miserable. It’s hard to do everything great at the same time. You try to achieve that, but in reality it’s really hard.”

When she’s with her parents, Seles doesn’t have the luxury of being strictly the doting daughter. She also must serve as translator for both of her parents, ethnic Hungarians who speak Hungarian and Czech. She also must handle the emotional negotiation with doctors and try to understand the medical ramifications of suggested treatment.

“There’s so many subjects that I really had no idea about,” she said. “Terms I didn’t think I would have to know at this stage. Dad got a book. We looked at it and I translated some of it. I go in and talk to the doctors. Some doctors are good, but I was surprised how some treat the patients. They are treated like a number. But they are human beings, they deserve to live.

“You have to ask questions. You have to have an advocate. When the two of them are there, who’s going to be the one to do that for them? I can’t just totally escape. I have to handle every detail. It’s tough to separate that, for me, at least, on court or even in practice.”

Losing the person who imbued in her his own love of tennis naturally creates conflicts. Now that Karolj Seles is home and recovering from chemotherapy, the father and daughter spend a few hours a day on the backyard tennis court. But not enough time, apparently, to please Seles’ critics.

She knows and can’t find a way to care about the criticism.

“Money, titles--those are all great and, as an athlete, you practice really hard to get that,” she said. “It doesn’t mean it’s going to make you happy. As a child, you think that’s the way--’I’m going to make my first million bucks, that’s what will make me happy.’ It will definitely give you a sense of security and a lot of things, but that’s not going to make you happy.

“For me, I still want to win every match that I play. But I do know it’s not going to make me happy if I win or I lose. It’s just a game that I play. I do believe that everything happens for a reason, the good and the bad. I’ve had so much good happen in my life, but also a lot of bad. You deal with it and move on. That’s all you can do.”