RIO DE JANEIRO – Gustavo Kuerten grabs his arm and says: “I’ve got goose bumps”. He is talking about Joao Fonseca. And Kuerten opens his eyes, smiles and says without hesitation: he would have been incapable of winning Roland Garros in 1997 facing the world that Fonseca faces today.
‘I certainly wouldn’t have won that tournament!’ said Kuerten during an interview with a small group of media in Rio de Janeiro, including CLAY.
Kuerten was 20 years old and ranked 66th in the world when, in June 1997, he surprised the world: he hadn’t won any titles on the ATP circuit, but he lifted the Musketeers’ Cup, he became champion of Roland Garros almost from a tennis vacuum.
With Brazil experiencing ‘Fonseca fever’, Kuerten, now 48 years old, took his time in a refrigerated cellar while the Rio neighbourhood of Leblon burned in the street. He took time to remember what he experienced almost 28 years ago and what he is experiencing today with the emergence of the 18-year-old tennis player, Fonseca, whom he himself sees as capable of being world number one.
That Roland Garros in 1997, where he defeated the two-time Spanish champion Sergi Bruguera in the final, has little to do with the tennis played today in the Grand Slams and on the tour in general.
‘Today is very difficult. The level of contention I had in 1997…’ he begins to say, before mentioning a key person in those Parisian days: Diana Gabanyi.
Gabanyi accompanied him to that tournament as his press officer, something unusual for a number 66 in the rankings, but which was a real success for a career that would lead him to win Roland Garros twice more and to end the 2000 season as the number one player in world tennis. Today, Gabanyi, also a key figure in the Rio Open that is being played this week, fulfils a similar, albeit expanded, role with Fonseca.
‘It was a tremendous success to have Diana with us, it helped me a lot. Do you remember that in the middle of the tournament a lot of Brazilian journalists arrived from the Confederations Cup? Imagine all the requests, videos for friends, for brothers… We weren’t prepared to deal with that. Of course, it didn’t exist either, maybe we would have had a protocol to follow’.
Yes, that was the Confederations Cup that was played in France at the same time as Roland Garros, in preparation for the 1998 World Cup in France. In that Confederations Cup, Roberto Carlos scored a free kick goal against France in Lyon, 32 metres from the opposition goal. A shot with an almost impossible curve, one of the best goals of all time.
Kuerten thinks again, laughs, and says without hesitation: “I don’t think I could take it today, it doesn’t feel good at all, there’s a lot of pressure from technology today”.
‘At Roland Garros in 1997 I would stay on the video games up to 30 minutes before preparing for the match. Today that’s impossible. When I look at the routine today I am very grateful for the times I lived through, I had much more freedom.’
‘Of course today tennis players earn much more money, 50 times more than then, it has nothing to do with my time. But the pressure and the consequences today are stronger.’
Kuerten has enormous confidence in the future of Fonseca, number 68 in the world rankings after winning his first title on the ATP’s major circuit last week in Buenos Aires. A tournament, the Argentina Open, that Kuerten himself won in 2001, four months before his third and final Roland Garros.
Kuerten also jokes about the Argentines: the island where he lives, Florianópolis, in the south of Brazil, is experiencing a tourist invasion of the ‘irmaos’ (brothers), as the Brazilians call the Argentines.
‘They’re going crazy!‘ says Kuerten, amazed, using Argentine slang. “In summer, my Spanish improves a lot, I hear ”Argentino’ everywhere,’ he adds, before going back to analysing what Fonseca means for Brazilian tennis.
‘João’s potential on the court has been evident to us for more than two years now, and it is the result of well-designed work, far beyond the boy who simply hits the ball and starts hitting everything. It’s what happened to me, or even more: there is work, effort and dedication from several people who were there and who demonstrated an ability to evolve extraordinarily.’
‘Joao is a force to be reckoned with, it’s marvellous, it’s marvellous, because watching all the matches in Buenos Aires and dealing with the physical and mental difficulties, the various ambushes he went through, winning the tournament at that age… It’s beautiful, it’s admirable’.
‘On the Monday after the final I was so excited that I said to myself ‘I’m going back to the courts’. What a thrill, what fun! It was my therapy, I had sensational training. Joao is very motivating, very inspiring’.
