When cool Kuerten became the king of clay in the days before Nadal would reign supreme in Paris
With the French Open delayed until September, Jon Turner takes a walk down memory lane and recalls one its most popular winners
It may feel like ancient history, but there was actually a time when the French Open wasn’t dominated by one man.
Rafael Nadal has spent the past 15 years setting the sort of records that, realistically, will never be broken: 12 titles and a 93-2 win-loss record, so far, are not the sort of returns that are likely to be matched.
Nadal’s French Open achievements – and his major hauls along with fellow rivals, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, in the Big Three club – have managed to leave past champions in the shade.
But in the years before the Spaniard muscled and topspinned his way to Roland Garros greatness, a different kind of champion etched his name into the French Open history books.
While Nadal is all brooding intensity and fidgety routines, Gustavo Kuerten – with his curly shoulder-length hair, deceptively languid playing style, and a smile that could light up the Paris skyline – was quite the opposite.
Yet, underneath the Brazilian’s laidback persona was a fearless champion who won the hearts of tennis fans after his unexpected triumph at the 1997 French Open.
In such ordinary form was then 20-year-old Kuerten leading up to Roland Garros that year, he wasn’t even sure if he was going to participate.
“I’d play one great game and then the next I couldn’t put a ball in the court,” Kuerten said in a documentary featuring that win. “As the weeks went by, my confidence just evaporated.”
In a last-ditch effort the week before Paris, he returned to Brazil and played in a Challenger Series event – the level below the ATP Tour. He won and headed back to Europe with renewed optimism. “It gave me the drive, strength, and energy you need not just to compete but to be a great champion,” he said.
What transpired over two weeks in Paris would live long in the memory and cement Kuerten as one of the French Open’s beloved champions.
While most of the field went for tucked white t-shirts and shorts with an odd trim colour for some variation, Kuerten was decked out head to toe in yellow and blue – from his rotation of colourful bandanas and dual-coloured T-shirt with white stripes, to yellow socks and blue trainers.
Kuerten not only came out on top in the fashion stakes but on the court, too, making his mark on the tournament with his attacking baseline play, chips and charges, gliding court coverage, and snappy, powerful first serve.
En route to the final, the then world No 66, competing in just his third Grand Slam, took out two former winners – Thomas Muster and defending champion Yevgeny Kafelnikov – and a future finalist in Andriy Medvedev.
He was pushed to five sets in all three matches in succession. The skinny youth not only had style but steel, too.
Awaiting in the final was former double French Open champion Sergi Bruguera, who won back-to-back titles in 1993 and 1994. Kuerten showed no nerves for a novice. He went out and decimated the Spaniard 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.
In doing so, Kuerten tied the record for winning a Grand Slam in the least amount of attempts. He is the only player to defeat four previous winners in the same French Open, and he is the third lowest-ranked player to win a major singles title. Kuerten is also the only player to win a Challenger event and a Grand Slam in consecutive weeks. Nadal did leave a few French Open records for others, after all.
Kuerten would be crowned the French Open champion twice more, in 2000 and 2001, but by that stage the Brazilian was one of the ATP Tour’s leading players and was top seed for his hat-trick triumph. Yet, even as Kuerten evolved and matured as a player, his loveable traits continued in his career: the same ear-to-ear smile, the same bushy hair, the breezy and entertaining playing style, even if the clothes became less garish.
While unquestionably a claycourt specialist, Kuerten achieved a degree of success elsewhere, winning the Cincinnati Masters and Tour Finals and reaching the quarters at Wimbledon and US Open. A winner of 20 titles, 14 came on clay and six on hard courts.
Injuries would take their toll on Kuerten, in particular a troublesome hip, and he decided in 2008 to hang up his racket after one more outing at his most successful tournament. Wearing his famous yellow and blue from 1997, Kuerten’s final match was a first-round defeat to Paul-Henri Mathieu. The 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 outcome, coincidentally, was the exact result of his title win over Bruguera 11 years earlier.
As well as winning a legion of fans for his tennis exploits, Kuerten was also extremely popular off the court.
Part of a tight-knit family, his father died of a heart attack when Gustavo was very young. His youngest brother, Guilherme, had cerebral palsy and Kuerten would generously donate his prize money to causes for people with similar disabilities. He also gave Guilherme all of his trophies as souvenirs.
He was even popular with the press, three times winning the Prix Orange Roland Garros Award for sportsmanship, awarded by tennis journalists, and was given the ATP Arthur Ashe Humanitarian of the Year Award in 2003.
Kuerten was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 2012. So, while the French Open will likely never have another champion like Rafael Nadal, likewise there will never be another Gustavo Kuerten.