[CoryAnnAvants#1]

I read that when Monica first started in her comeback, she had a more "adventurous" approach to her game. She was attacking the net a lot more frequently than she did before (or does now) and was far more willing to come in behind short balls. Apparently she would even throw in a serve and volley play every so often (and was actually quite good at it)

So my question is why did she stop doing that?

[MLF]

The biggest difference in her game when she came back was that her serve was far better than it had been. She didn't really come in a lot at all to be honest - she just seemed a bit more confident to step in and drive volley midair balls. She always did throw in the odd serve and volley - she did so against both Graf & Sabatini at Roland Garros '92 - she came in several times against Gaby in that match.

[azinna]

As MLF already said, the positive differences were just her improved serve (finally able to get cheap points off it!) and the drive volley, which she really didn't execute that often (but it added to making her opponents feel overwhelmed).

The 3 major negative differences: (a) she was no longer absolutely, incredibly fearless on the major points, (b) her movement and stamina were by then exploitable, and by 1997: (c) she lost the severe angles, her rallying became powerful, aggressive, yet mortal. The Grafs, Hingises and Williamses could retrieve, force the error, get in a power shot of their own, exploit the movement issue, exploit the stamina issue, etc..

It all came back for Seles for 6 matches during Roland Garros 1998, right after her father's passing (please see her semi against Hingis for how she should have played Martina each and every time). But (sigh) against ASV, in the finals, she sort of froze, hitting her forehand hard and deep (bit again with no real angle, no variation) to ASV's backhand. All ASV did was block it back until the error came (which for Seles was often a sign of fatigue). It was for me the most frustrating third set to watch.