Brazilians Now Developing a Love Affair With Tennis

When Pele was a boy and too poor to buy a soccer ball, he’d make one out of old socks tied together and hone his moves in pickup games. The street was a crucible for the raw talent that helped make Brazil “the land of soccer.”

A new kind of Pele is emerging from the streets and shantytowns, and this one swings a racket.

The rise of Gustavo Kuerten--”Guga” to Brazilians--to the top of the tennis world has generated a wave of “Gugamania” in this country of 170 million. It also has inspired an unusual project called “Tenis Para Todos,” Portuguese for “Tennis for Everyone.”

Begun in 1999 by the Rio de Janeiro State Tennis Federation, the project is taking tennis to poor communities, building public courts in rural and inner-city districts and supplying free balls, rackets and instructors.

“Tennis today is no longer a sport of the elite,” said Federation President Helcio Ferreira da Silva. “We’re reaching 2,000 poor kids, and that’s just the start.”

It’s a daunting task. A gulf separates rich and poor in Brazil, where many earn the minimum wage of $66 a month. And you can’t make a tennis ball out of old socks.

Until recently, the closest tennis came to mass appeal was frescobol, a Rio invention played on the beach with wooden paddles and a rubber ball. It didn’t help that Brazil had no top players since Maria Bueno, years before television and the tennis boom of the 1970s.

But when Kuerten came along, everything changed. After he stunned the tennis world by winning the French Open in 1997, waiting lines appeared overnight at previously idle tennis courts as Brazilians belatedly caught the tennis bug.

“A new generation of Gugas is already on the way,” da Silva said. “Guga is doing his job. He’s charismatic . . . and [he] has turned the country on to tennis. But we have to do our part, otherwise he will retire and tennis won’t catch on.”

Kuerten, who spent much of the year at No. 1, was replaced by Australian Lleyton Hewitt and finished the year at No. 2.

Tennis already has caught on in Sao Sebastiao do Alto, a once-prosperous coffee-growing center 130 miles northeast of Rio. Within months after the town received the first two public courts under “Tennis for Everyone,” nearly one-tenth of the 3,000 residents had signed up for tennis instruction, half of them children. Sao Sebastiao now has its own tournaments--even its own ranking.

“A year ago, they didn’t even know a tennis ball had fuzz,” Da Silva said.

Tennis also is hot in Rio’s notorious Favela da Mare, or Tidewater Slum, a complex of 16 shantytowns and about 150,000 residents on the edge of Rio’s Guanabara Bay. The federation built two courts in the Vila Olimpica, a city-run sports complex deep in the favela.

Outside, policemen with submachine guns stand an uneasy watch by a ditch that separates the turf of warring drug gangs. But inside the chain-link fence is a startling oasis of green fields, tracks and even a pool, where about 2,500 neighborhood kids aged 4 to 17 come each week to learn and play sports for free.

When the tennis project opened in June, not even the instructors thought the children would be interested. But today, about 250 kids a week are taking lessons on the two concrete courts at the Vila Olimpica and nearly 1,000 are on the waiting list.

“The project was a surprise,” said Marianina Impagliazzo, a project organizer. “First, because it’s an elite sport, we thought it wouldn’t catch on, that here it was soccer or nothing. But the kids saw there’s something beyond soccer.”

Would-be athletes in the favela face special hurdles. Poverty often brings malnutrition. The drug gangs lure children away with the prospect of easy money and discourage residents from crossing turf lines.

“We try to seduce the children, bring them here and break the grip of the drug traffickers,” Impagliazzo said. Children must attend school to come to Vila Olimpica, where they get free medical and nutritional care and a snack that often substitutes for a meal.

On the courts, they pound balls off a wooden backboard or trade volleys under the eye of instructor Marcio Velasco, who divides his time between the favela and the exclusive Barra Winner Tennis Club in Rio’s upscale Barra da Tijuca district.

Each wears a yellow or blue Vila vest, but the footwear is a grab bag of what’s available or affordable. There are sneakers, clogs, rubber sandals--and often nothing at all.

“For their world, they’re coming along very well,” Velasco said during a break.

One rising star is Debora da Costa, a 12-year-old who had never picked up a racket until a year ago. In nine tournaments across Rio de Janeiro state, she reached the semifinals every time and won once, rising to fifth in the state ranking. Trophies and medals adorn a shelf at her home, a one-bedroom shack she shares with her family in the Timbau Hill district, the poorest in the favela.

Her play drew the attention of a tennis club owner, who provides a racket, gear bag, shoes and outfits for Debora to compete against rivals with top-of-the-line equipment and years of private classes.

“It looks like we have money,” she says quietly. “If people saw where we lived. . . . “ Her voice trails off.

Although Debora dreams of being No. 1, her father has a more modest vision. He knows she needs a coach, better food and conditioning if she hopes to make a living from tennis.

“My dream is for her to finish the eighth grade, go to high school, graduate, maybe learn English,” said Paulo Ferreira Costa, an unemployed bus driver who separated from her mother when Debora was born.

Tennis already has taken her further than either imagined.

“The higher you climb, the greater the fall. She has to have her head on straight,” Costa said. “But she has a lot of luck, a lucky star. How many families never get this chance?”