Welcome to New York, ma’am. The only place in the world where Christmas is done properly.” It’s holiday season, and there’s not a doorman in this glittering city who is willing to let you pass by without a quick reminder. The place sparkles and shines with the fun and finance of it all — from the glistening snow on crowded streets to the sumptuous array of lights flickering atop buildings and threaded through every tree. Fur coats and designer handbags, sunglasses and diamonds the size of tennis balls.

Among the shoppers out on this crisp morning is Monica Seles, the 32-year-old who, half a lifetime ago, was the greatest female tennis player on the planet.

“Christmas,” she sighs. “I never really did Christmas before. Christmas Day? I mean — what’s that? What’s it all about? I was always flying on Christmas Day. Did you know that Christmas Day is absolutely the best day to fly? It is. No crowded airports and crowded planes. I always flew to Australia. That’s what Christmas was for me — a plane journey to the next tournament.”

She won’t be on a plane this year, and she wasn’t last year. A combination of injuries, loss of form and the simple matter of being stabbed between the shoulder blades by a maniac clutching a steak knife conspired to edge her out of the game she has loved and practised since she was a toddler.

“I guess you could say that mine has not been a conventional career,” is her understated summary. “Little about my career has gone to plan. Little of my life, perhaps.”

Still, there are benefits to life away from the tennis circuit, surely? “Oh, yeah. I can go out to dinner when I want. I can see friends, and I can live, I guess, a normal life. But, gosh how I miss it. I miss being competitive. I miss the whole thing. People think I’ve retired, but I haven’t — not at all. I’m still playing regularly and I’m coming back if I can. Martina (Hingis) is making a comeback and I think, ‘Oh, that’s interesting’. I’m hoping that 2006 will be my year. I’ve given myself until the end of it to return. If I haven’t done it by then, I’ll retire. I just don’t want to slip away. I want to go with a fight. Does that make sense?” It makes sense, of course. It makes absolute, sparkling, crystal-clear sense that the woman who was robbed of much of her career one cold afternoon in Germany would want to fight for another chance.

“I don’t feel like a victim and I don’t want to be regarded as a victim,” she says. But it’s difficult not to think of her as such, as she sits there, wrapped in her oversized coat, clutching her hot chocolate beneath the tinsel and fairy lights, talking in whispers about the dozen years since her world was turned upside down.

Seles leaves the warmth of the hotel and slides into the back seat of the waiting limousine. “Happy holidays, Steffi,” shouts the doorman as he shuts the car door for her and tugs at his peaked cap. “Sure,” she replies. “Thank you, sir.”

The car winds its way through Spanish Harlem towards our destination — Crotona in south Bronx; a small neighbourhood of poverty and violence. More than 90% of schoolchildren receive free lunches and 90% suffer asthma because of the pollution from the huge trucks that speed through the area.

Seles is heading for the rough side of town to witness an incredible programme called “Fight Back”, in which women and girls are taught ju-jitsu and self-defence to help them cope with the violence they face daily on their streets. She is here as an ambassador of Laureus, the international organisation that seeks to fund sporting projects like this one, where sport is used for the greater good. Seles has just been voted on to the Laureus Academy and is thrilled with the honour.

“Have you seen who they have in that academy?” she asks, wide-eyed. “I couldn’t believe it when I met them all. There are about 40 of the biggest sports stars ever. I met Nadia Comaneci (the Olympic gold-medal gymnast) — she was my hero when I was growing up, and now we’re both on this thing together.”

Seles says she really believes in sport. The way it pulls communities together, helps people have a common goal, gives them pride in themselves, self-esteem and physical skills. “It’s given me the sort of life I could never have expected to have when I was a little girl. I do think sometimes about how different my life would be without sport.”

It would have been incomparable. As a young girl, Seles was set for a life in a two-bedroom flat in a seven-storey apartment block in Novi Sad in what was then Yugoslavia (now Serbia & Montenegro). The family struggled to get by. Her father, Karolj, was a former children’s television presenter turned cartoonist, struggling on poor wages in a rundown economy.