Dark clouds lift for Kuerten

For an athlete whose sporting activity in the spring extended to nothing more arduous than dominoes, Gustavo Kuerten has certainly turned things round. Following his straight-sets thrashing of the 2000 champion, Marat Safin, in the second round at the US Open, the 25-year-old Brazilian is being hailed in New York this weekend as an unseeded dark horse who could gallop off with the title.

All of which helped to raise a smile on a face where smiles are never far away. The 6-4 6-4 7-5 dismissal of the second-seeded Safin was only Kuerten's 14th win (against 10 defeats) in a year severely abbreviated by the hip operation he underwent in February, but it demonstrated that "Guga", three times a winner of the French Open, is back.

"This is my happiest day of the year," said Kuerten, smiling of course. "This has given me my confidence back. I was expecting tough situations this year, I knew it would be like this, so I tried to prepare myself better for bigger tournaments like the French and this one." But, he revealed, it was his first-round match which had worried him more. Julien Boutter outlasted Guga over five sets in the first round of the Australian Open in January and, until he saw off the Frenchman in four sets at Flushing Meadows last Tuesday, Kuerten had never beaten him.

That loss in Australia, rapidly followed by another first-round exit in Buenos Aires, persuaded Kuerten that a persistent hip problem needed addressing. "I was in the best stage of my career and suddenly this injury started to bother me. It wasn't an injury where I needed surgery right away, like if I had broken the ligaments in my knee, so I didn't have to stop playing. But I didn't believe in my body any more. I was afraid of running after certain balls, and this way you can't play tennis."

So on 26 February Guga entered hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, for arthroscopic surgery on the right hip. He spent only one day on crutches but was off the circuit for three months recuperating in his home town of Florianopolis, which chafed with someone who describes himself as "an electric guy". He explained: "In the last 15 years I had never spent a month without playing tennis. I also set a record for time spent sleeping in my own bed." He caught up with the Harry Potter books and, when dominoes palled, was able to extend his exercise to a few sessions at the snooker table.

Kuerten, who had ended 2000 by pipping Safin for the world No 1 ranking, came back at a clay-court event in Majorca at the end of April. He then reached the quarter-finals of the German Open before going out in the fourth round in defence of his title at Roland Garros (to the eventual champion, Albert Costa). He again opted out of Wimbledon, and his preparations for the US Open were not the most encouraging. A quarter-final spot at Los Angeles was followed by first-round losses in Toronto (to Tim Henman) and Cincinnati. Having opened the year ranked second, Guga had slipped to 65 by the start of the season's last Grand Slam.

Safin, champion and semi-finalist in his last two visits to New York, never came to terms with the level of Kuerten's play. Guga did not drop serve, though his task was eased by the all-too-familiar fashion in which the Russian showed himself a master of the difficult shot and a duffer when it came to putting simple ones away. Coaching Marat, now the task of Alexander Volkov, must make Berti Vogts happy to be managing Scotland.

While not exactly churlish about Kuerten's prospects, Safin questioned whether Guga was capable of keeping up the level of attainment. "I think he's hungry, he wants to come back. But let's see how consistent he will be." Safin, who revealed afterwards that he has been playing through the pain of a cracked rib, added: "Your body needs time to rest. You cannot run 365 days a year. Now that tennis is getting faster and stronger you need to take a rest now and then." Clearly, Kuerten's involuntary three-month "rest" has been beneficial, though he conceded that the hip still hurts. "I think if I don't have pain is when I'm gonna die," he joked. "At the level of tennis we play, if you wake up and have no pain you are maybe not feeling yourself. Every time you have to get something going, the shoulder, the legs, the hip hurts a little bit, but it's nothing to the pain I had at the end of last year."

Kuerten's next opponent will be Nicolas Massu, one of the trio of Chileans who set a Grand Slam record for that nation by all reaching the third round. Guga dyed his hair bright orange for the Safin match (to match his shirt, he claimed) and threatened a different colour against Massu. But if the future is not necessarily orange for Kuerten, it is certainly bright.