TENNIS: GUGA HOLDS AT ROME TOO

It's got back to the habits of these last years, at least for what regards the male tennis. At the international of Italy a first level board does not touch nevertheless what seems to be a sure dual of the springtime tennis. First Montecarlo and then Rome. Two prestigious and fascinating events, preliminary to the great appointment of Paris of the Roland Garros. On a quick sequence, only distanced by fifteen days, the two tournaments often had the same winner. It occurred far as six times in the last 12 years and the circumstance occurred also in the last edition in 1999 with the Brazilian Gustavo Kuerten who hit the dual. If in the conclusion of Monaco the Carioca athlete could benefit from the impaired conditions of the Chilean Rios, compelled to withdraw after a set and a half, the final at the Foro Italico has given instead a very good spectacle. The rival of Kuerten, the Australian Pat Rafter, putting an important portion of his own future on the line, with the possibility, if he won, to become the new world number one. As motivations were not enough, the difference in styles of the two players, opposing the attacking instinct of the " kangaroo " against the accelerations from the back of the court of Guga, showed for two hours and forty minutes sprinkling schemes. At the end Kuerten overcame in only three sets and for Rafter the attack to the world throne is to postpone. The double hit Montecarlo-Rome instead gives back morals and continuity to a tennis player coming forward in 1997, when as an outsider succeeded in winning the most important event all over the world that is the Roland Garros. Then the troubles to reassert himself caused worries about the possibilities of the South American athlete. Indeed it was not the first time that in the male tennis environment a glaring success follows a standstill period. Chang, the most glaring case, but also Korda and till few months ago also Kafelnikov, are glaring examples as a target alike the conquering of a Slam tournament could satisfy dreams nursed since childhood. For a boy grown in the earth fields of Florianopolis, care of the elder brother Raphael, a club's teacher, winning the maximum tournament on the "hard court " was a legendary venture. "Guga" has succeeded in it notwithstanding the economic troubles and the family pains taking him away the paternal help, dead, the irony of fate, while arbitrating a juniors match. After Paris 1997, a season behind him with two minor titles as Stuttgart and Majorca, it seemed he could assert that after the glory it could arrive times of relative welfare. Only 23 years old instead there's still remarkable supply of energy, sweat and technical means to spend on the field. Kuerten proved there's still in his ego the so celebrated "hunger of successes ". Now after the prestigious dual he's ready for the new assault to Paris, where he starts inevitably among favourites. Hoping to give again his father Guilhermo, disabled, the symbol-trophy of the Parisian conquers, that is the four musketeers cup.

 

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