Kuerten's youngest brother suffered prolonged oxygen deprivation during birth and consequently suffers from mental retardation and severe physical retardation. Then Kuerten's father, an amateur tennis player, died when Gustavo was just eight years of age, collapsing from a heart attack while umpiring a local juniors game.

Gustavo was already showing his talent with a racket at that age and when he turned 14 he met Larri Passos who was to become his long-term coach.

Passos convinced Kuerten's family that the youngster had the ability to make a living at the game and he turned professional at the age of 18.

Just two years later he stunned the world with his first grand slam title at Roland Garros in 1997, beating three previous winners (Thomas Muster, Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Sergei Brugera) along the way. He further endeared himself to the crowd by bowing repetitively to his hero Bjorn Borg, who was on hand to present him with his trophy on final day.

Kuerten entered the tournament ranked at 66 and still sits third on the list of highestranked seeds ever to win a grand slam title. As he did with every trophy he ever won, Kuerten gave the French Open bauble to his young brother, and every year donates his entire winnings from one tournament to his local clinic in Brazil, which cares for people suffering from similar disabilities.

His win in France positioned him as the golden boy of Brazilian tennis and he initially suffered in the glare of the spotlight, struggling to live up to the pressures being heaped on him by an expectant public. But he gradually refound his form and victory in the French Open final over Magnus Norman meant that by December 2000 he had reached the number one slot in the world, in doing so breaking an eight-year stranglehold by the US on the year-end top spot.

He stayed in the top spot for most of 2001, but his third and final French Open win was to represent the peak of his career as a hip injury started to take its toll. His brilliance still occasionally flashed through (such as his straight sets demolition of Roger Federer in 2004 in Paris, Federer's only grand slam defeat that year) but his downward slide was constant.

He is currently at 669 in the ATP rankings.