A three-time Roland Garros winner analyzes the “weight of social networks,” and the emergence of a new generation will become visible over time.
At 49 years old, Gustavo Kuerten still maintains the same seductive, irreverent style that helped him win his first Roland Garros victory for Brazil in 1997. After that, he won two more clay tournaments in Paris, won the ATP Finals and became number one in the world in tennis. Despite such a successful resume, Guga remains humble.
During a sponsored event in Sao Paulo, the former tennis player accepted the report’s challenge to create the perfect tennis player. Who has the best forehand? And the strongest backhand? Guga didn’t sit on the fence and showed that he was also “phone squeezed”.
“I think João is already close to it (completed). Starting today, we will add (Yannick) Sinner and (Carlos) Alcaraz to form João. Who knows, but he can also distract the opponent by wearing his hair,” he joked.
Guga points to the benefits of the new generation through social media, saying, “They are television.”
different generations
Now, in addition to hopes of repeating Manezinho da Ilha’s success, names like Bea Haddad and Joao Fonseca have to deal with pressure from social media that was not present in Guga’s time. For tennis idols, the price of exposure is high, but the financial security is also great.
“Everything is proportional. Their exposure, the funding they receive, the investment in tennis is a ladder that grows with this visibility. Today, being a tennis player means being recognized all over the world, just as it was before. It’s an international figure. But the story is very different. Because you can see the personal side being more shielded and the space being overly reduced. Now it would be very difficult to go out to dinner or have people filming all at once. I wasn’t born that way,” he said in a conversation. earth.
Despite putting his Instagram account under the control of an advisor, Guga says it’s important for athletes to have a presence on the platform: “It’s television itself. There’s no middle ground, it’s already going direct to the consumer. So it’s all about this ratio. I think it’s natural to think about the business, the visibility, the expectations. But usually, we confess, we are the biggest agents of the need to perform. The players themselves already have to do the best they can, perform well, and perform almost all the time.” ”
The advantage for the three-time Roland Garros champion is that tennis players these days have the resources to take breaks in their careers, as was the case with Bea Haddad, who ended her season early to take care of her mental health.
“Today they can rest for a year. They can rest a little more. I would say that in a 20-year career they are reasonable, calm and even more generous. The idea was that a player in our time would start at 18, then 25, 28, but he had already finished almost downhill,” he claimed.
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