What Uproar? Seles Says It’s News to Her : Tennis: She denies rumors and says leg injuries kept her from playing at Wimbledon.

Monica Seles, the No. 1-ranked woman tennis player in the world, didn’t realize until recently the uproar she had caused by pulling out of Wimbledon last month.

“I didn’t read about it until a few days ago, when I found out about all the ridiculous rumors that were flying around,” she said.

In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Wednesday morning, Seles discarded rumors she passed up Wimbledon to preserve her No. 1 ranking.

The 17-year-old Seles said her withdrawal from Wimbledon stemmed from shin splints and a slight stress fracture to her left leg.

“It was getting pretty close to a bad stress fracture,” she said. “I needed to take care of it. I was so confused. I was going to these different doctors. One was saying it was a stress fracture. The other was saying go ahead and play.”

Consequently, she said, she didn’t make her decision to withdraw from the tournament until just before it started, “and when I look back on it, I hope I never have to be in this situation again in my life.”

Seles apparently contacted the Women’s Tennis Assn. for the first time Tuesday to explain the situation, and WTA chief Gerard Smith said he was satisfied with her explanation.

Seles, fined $6,000 by the WTA for pulling out of Wimbledon without a satisfactory reason, fueled the rumor mill by refusing to be specific about the injury that forced her out of the Grand Slam event. She had won the Australian and French open tournaments, moving her to the top of the women’s world rankings.

Some speculated that she wanted to retain her No. 1 ranking for financial considerations, and making up an excuse to miss Wimbledon assured that she wouldn’t lose it there.

“That was the worst one I heard,” she said. “If I had been well at Wimbledon, I would have made much more money.”

Another rumor was that she had canceled a reservation on a house near Wimbledon long before announcing her pullout and therefore had known about it long before telling tournament organizers.

“That’s not true,” she said from ABC’s Sarasota, Fla., affiliate, WWSB. “We found a different house. If somebody wants proof, we have proof we went to this other house. I don’t know why people try to make up these rumors. . . . It’s not fair to me, because, believe me, I was having a very hard time dealing with this.”