PARIS -- As Gustavo Kuerten spit out the bit as well as the dirt and went on to grind Alex Corretja into mounds of the identical swirling stuff on Sunday, it was easy to see why American tennis players just can't hack it on the bronzed clay of Roland Garros or anywhere else.

With considerable thought, energy, patience and endurance -- the effervescent, spectacular Senor Surf defended his kingdom on clay with a dominant 6-7 (3), 7-5, 6-2, 6-0 performance as his country's flags, drums and joyous dancing spread through the stadium -- the 6-foot-3, 180-pound champion won the French Open for the third time in a fashion that simply will never be understood by the guys from our side of the pond. Nor could they comprehend the stretching and grinding and burrowing deep and ugly into the terre battu that the warm-weather, sun-loving B boys -- Kuerten from Brazil and Corretja from Barcelona -- were forced to accomplish through the rainy, windy conditions that enveloped the center court much of the meteorologically bizarre afternoon.

Despite his solid mobility, a glorious backhand to sell your family for and the winning pedigree of the Spanish Armada, the smaller, less powerful Corretja's only hope in the final was to extend Kuerten to tiebreaks -- where Guga was a surprisingly nervous 73-88 in his career, 5-13 this year. When Corretja did just that and won the opening breaker, 7-3, he had grabbed his first set in their last five matches off the fluid fellow from Florianapolis.

After missing an embarrassing volley on his first set point that you and I could have put away (well, maybe you), Guga found his rhythm in the second set and broke amiable Al in the tenth game. He went on to win a string of five straight games to reach 3-0 in the third. From then on -- as the sun finally came out and stayed there -- it was a relative day at the beach for the flamboyant character who lives, and spends most of his time away from the circuit, on his beauteous, Brazilian one.

Given his spotlight-devoted nature, when Guga reached a couple of match points, he naturally hammered one gimme overhead smack into the tape and another smack onto Corretja's racquet. But ultimately after he concluded the anticlimactic shutout -- that's a bagel even in Portuguese, though Kuerten probably felt as if he'd eaten an entire feijoada -- the old and new champion topped even himself and his show-stopping act of the fourth round when he escaped qualifier Michael Russell. Then, he took his racquet and carved a gigantic heart in the copper ground. ("The guy's Picasso," a beaten Yevgeny Kafelnikov would say in the next round, referring more to Kuerten's tennis than his painting.)

But this time, Guga whipped off his headband entrapping those wildly flaring surf curls and briskly walked out on the court to sketch one more huge heart. Then he plunked himself dramatically backward into the middle of it. Then he got up, ripped off his dirt-scarred shirt and pulled out a fresh one, on the front of which he had scrawled: Je (heart shape) Roland Garros. Instantly, the flattered Parisian audience went equally ecstatic, nearly drowning out the beat of the Brazilian percussionists, who might be parading the grounds and pounding still.

"I knew was like something that really touch the people when I did that, the heart ..." Guga said in his marvelously cracked English. "For me was so happiness that time, I was so full of good things that I try to share with the people around me.

"It's impossible to control, you know, these feelings when you are in my situation," said Kuerten, whose name is pronounced Qwere-Ton, not Curtain, although that's what he's shown to 31 victims in 34 clay matches this year while winning four of his 14 career titles.

With his victory Sunday, Kuerten became only the third man to win the French after being match point down (in an earlier round) -- the others were Rod Laver (1962) and Adriano Panatta ('76). But since he recovered from losing the first two sets and dramatically saved that encounter against Russell -- the gritty, 23-year-old American revelation that was playing in a qualifier in Italy on Sunday -- Kuerten would not be denied.

He popped a can on both Kafelnikov and the hottest Spaniard in the Armada, young Juan Carlos Ferrrero, before taking care of Corretja as if he was just another pale, wimpy tourist on the beach who needed sand kicked in his face.

Now, moreover, Guga's confidence, flair and oppressive groundstrokes have become as familiar and predominant on the clay of Paris as Pete Sampras' mastery of the lawns at Wimbledon. But can anyone imagine Sampras or any other American short of Point Given thriving amid those freaky conditions and on the slippery surface known as Guga's Garden?

Uncle Sam's net reps grow up on hard courts and feed their tennis jones by developing enormous, testosteronian serves with matching ground strokes that end points as quickly as possible. They also spend hours learning to volley -- another skill Kuerten and other assorted dirt-court specialists characteristically have no need of.

Sampras may be the best all-around player in many generations, but he'll never win the French -- not merely because his game is ill suited to the long, energy-sapping rallies, but because he was not willing to work hard enough on its transformation. Sampras' running forehand is the most dangerous, match-turning weapon in the game. But he has never been prepared to think and construct a point, to wait out a foe and steer an assault based on attrition.

Sampras trained for the European spring by running a lot. But to get ready for Monte Carlo, Rome and ultimately Paris, you have to play on clay: practices, workouts, matches, all day, most every day. Hey, a guy wins seven Wimbledon titles on grass -- you don't question his methods. But for the fifth-seeded Pistol to show up each year in Paris and hurl a couple of stink-bombs such as last week when he barely beat a French qualifier named Cedric (Not The Entertainer) Kauffmann and then got humiliated by the new spritzer flavor, Galo Blanco, it is particularly undignified for the man who owns those record 13 titles in the other Slams.

As for Andre Agassi, his championship here in '99 -- joining Don Budge, Fred Perry, Laver and Roy Emerson as the only players to win all four majors in a career, validating his versatility and greatness -- is long gone. Last year, he was swamped by Karol Kucera in the second round of The French and this week he was positively swallowed up by Sebastien Grosjean. Or was it by Backhand Bill Clinton? For those who don't think Bubba's fashionably late, star-hogging celeb cameo had anything to do with Agassi surrendering his 6-1 first-set lead and then crumbling like a whipped hound, read none other than John McEnroe's explanation in London's Sunday Telegraph:

"I don't think Andre will ever consider hiring Bill Clinton as a coach," McEnroe wrote. "...Things were cool for a whole 20 minutes and suddenly he gets an enormous jolt to the system. It was too much for him. Clinton was where Agassi felt he should be: the center of attention; the focus of the people, TV cameras and photographers; the man they had all come to see. Tennis players want everything just right. ... Agassi won't even have a ball boy out of place. I could see him getting worked up, but he should have fought and conquered the urge to get mad with Clinton being the center of attention. Presidents tend to be that way. ... (Agassi's) dismal performance in the press conference afterwards was as unpredictable as the man himself. He's got a lot of explaining to do."

(Or, as Jim Courier said: "I wanted to give Andre the trophy. Instead, Bill gave him the whammy.")

In turn, natch, Agassi gave the world media the whammy, going to his nasty, belligerent, curt card and blowing them off almost as easily as Grosjean did him. At least, last spring Agassi presented the press the pleasure of ripping him for not showing up for the obligatory post-match grilling. One thing about the divine Double-A: He can bow and wave and blow kisses to all four corners and do that Mr. Sincere Humility thing all he wishes when he wins. After these galling defeats, he turns back into his familiar old Image-is-Everything, Vegas punk. Can't Steffi teach him about class in defeat?

The others among America's Final Four -- Michael Chang and Courier -- both own French Open titles. But in the glow of hindsight, Chang's in 1989 might have been a fluke. The tiny watchcharm Chang's weaponry is his legs and brains; but he's unable to keep up with bigger, stronger customers and he has been runner-up in three Slam finals in twelve years since and has not come close to winning.

Conversely, Courier is probably the best model for future American clay success. Courier's U.S.-based mentor, Jose Higueras, constantly preached "one more ball" to the redhead, who was an animal as both a laborer and competitor. He won Paris back-to-back, breaking through a decade ago, outlasting Agassi in the final amid the same Sahara-like conditions that plagued Kuerten and Corretja on Sunday.

"Like a hurricane," Guga smiled afterward, "especially for me, in contact lens, and sun coming in my eye."

Like beauty, American tennis hopes are all in the eye of the beholder. Apart from Agassi and Sampras, ranked three and five now, respectively, Jan Michael Gambill, Todd Martin and Chang are the only Americans in the top Ninety in the world. Oh, yeah, and Andy Roddick, who's No. 48. Gambill and Martin are stereotypical serve and volleyers -- think of the movie, Forget Paris. But Roddick, only 18, won both Atlanta and Houston on clay this spring, played through cramps to epically beat Chang here and was giving the 6th-ranked Aussie star, Lleyton Hewitt, all he wanted in the third round before retiring with a pulled hamstring.

Many experts believe Roddick, comfortable from the base slashing his haymaker forehand, will breakthrough big time on clay even before he does grass where his inexperience on the volley will negate his monster service deliveries. But he and our other domestic teen hopes, Taylor Dent and Mardy Fish, are still many clay miles behind Kuerten, Corretja, Ferrero, Grosjean and handfuls of other Euro- and South American youngsters.

"I did not feel I could lose. There are always magical feelings for myself here. I have hard time to describe. It's a place I love to be," said Kuerten after a victory that inducted him into the exclusive club of players who have captured the La Coupe des Mousquetaires at least three times: Rene Lacoste, Ivan Lendl, Mats Wilander, Henri Cochet (4 titles) and Bjorn Borg (6). When Borg won his sixth and last major in 1981, the great Swede was 25 years old; shortly he would leave the game for all time. Who would dream that a mere two decades later a boy from Brazil would threaten that record?

And his name would be Guga?

And he would be only 24?

And the surf would still be lookin' up.

Curry Kirkpatrick, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, first covered the French Open in 1976. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.