* !201003121720624529912-p2@stats.comby Pete Bodo*
Gustavo Kuerten has been elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., which is welcome news not only because Kuerten was one of the most beloved players of recent times—well before he famously used his racquet to draw that great big heart on the red clay court in Philippe Chatrier stadium at Roland Garros.
When it came to appreciation, "Guga"' gave as good as he got, which was one reason for his immense popularity.
Another reason was the Carnivale atmosphere that attended so many of his matches, as scores of his fellow Brazilians pounded drums, danced sambas, and chanted rhymes—usually in the upper reaches of any given stadium—in a joyous effort to support him. I don't recall a single opponent ever complaining that those Kuerten fans were a nuisance or distraction.
Kuerten won three Grand Slam titles, all at the French Open, and a grand total of 20 singles titles—the same number as another former No. 1, Carlos Moya, and five more than the haul of that other former No. 1 who played such an enormous role in Kuerten's career, Marat Safin.
In Kuerten's best year, 2000, he and Safin were racing headlong for the No. 1 ranking in a sprint that would not end until the final event of the season, the ATP World Tour Finals (then called the Tennis Masters Cup) in Lisbon. Kuerten lost his first round-robin match to Andre Agassi, and if he lost another—on a relatively fast indoor hard court—Safin would have been assured of the No. 1 ranking.
It looked hopeless for Kuerten when the draw dictated that he play Pete Sampras and Agassi in back-to-back matches (semis and final). But Kuerten triumphed in both to win the event and conclude what remains the most exciting race for the year-end No. 1 ranking in ATP history.
But that win was not as improbable as it seemed, as Kuerten told me on one of the many occasions on which I interviewed him. He had developed his game (in his hometown of Florianopolis, Brazil) on the kind of sui generis court that was, and probably still is, the only option in many far-flung outposts of the game. The gritty court played something like a hybrid of clay and hard.
Given that Indian Wells is also being played on a fairly gritty hard court, I thought it might be fun to see how this three-time Roland Garros champ fared over the years in that event. Guga played there eight times; his best results were a final in 2003 (l. to Lleyton Hewitt) and a semifinal in 1999 (l. to Carlos Moya).
Kuerten took three first-round losses, but beat some excellent hard-court players over the years at Indian Wells, including Wayne Ferreira, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Richard Krajicek, and, in one tournament, a fast-court trinity of Goran Ivanisevic, Roger Federer, and James Blake. In his last appearance (2007), Guga was attempting his final comeback. Ranked No. 680, he lost his first-round match to a relatively unknown youngster from Argentina, then ranked No. 65, Juan Martin del Potro.
Kuerten was a mere 7-5 at Wimbledon. His best result—by far—was a quarterfinal (l. to Agassi). Only one of the players he beat en route to that finish was ranked higher than No. 196, and that was No. 57 David Prinosil. Guga never got beyond the quarters at the U.S. Open either, but he reached that round twice (l. to Cedric Pioline in 1999 and Kafelnikov in 2001). The Australian Open was his worst major; he was 7-8 Down Under—as compared to 36-8 at Roland Garros.
Guga's record is surprisingly uneven, even when you take into account the book on Kuerten. He moved well, but his takeback, particularly on the backhand side, was very long and time-consuming. That explains why he felt flummoxed by Wimbledon, where short backswings are, or were, the order of the day. But it fails to adequately answer why his record in Melbourne was so mediocre.
The only reason I can think of is that Guga was a relaxed guy who probably didn't spend much of tennis' already brief off-season getting fit or working on his game. Roland Garros was the tournament he loved the best, and he always played his way into shape for it.
Few tennis players have ever been so marked by tragedy yet so indifferent to doting on it, or making it a major part of his personal narrative. Kuerten was just eight when his father, an avid amateur player, died of a heart attack while umpiring a junior match. Kuerten had two brothers, Raphael (still, I assume, his business manager) and a younger brother who suffered irreparable brain damage because of oxygen deprivation during his birth. Kuerten gave every trophy he won as a pro, including three replicas of the Roland Garros prize, to his younger sibling, until the boy's death in 2007.
Famous for his loyalty to kin and close friends, Kuerten was coached by Larri Passos from the age of 14 to the end of his career 15 years later. Guga's career was damaged by a series of injuries he suffered while he was in his prime, between the years of 2002 and 2005. After a number of comeback attempts, he finally called it quits in May of 2008.
The induction ceremony at the Hall of Fame tends to be sedate and formal, but a part of me hopes that once again, hordes of Brazilians clad in the ubiquitous green-and-yellow soccer jerseys, waving flags that look like they're right out of Star Trek, descend on Newport like they once did on Roland Garros.