Gustavo Kuerten, former No. 1 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, celebrated the 15^th anniversary of his Barclays ATP World Tour Finals title on Thursday in Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian triumphed in Lisbon over Andre Agassi and kicked off a 43-week run at the top of the rankings.

To mark the occasion, Guga traveled to Sambadrome Marquês de Sapucaí, the traditional site of the Rio Carnival, and invited 200 underprivileged children to join him for mini-tennis and some cake. Each child received a medal as a gift for taking part in the activity.

The Brazilian Tennis Federation announced that, in honour of Kuerten’s title, every December 3^rd will now be “National Tennis Day” in Brazil. In addition to winning the year-end championships in 2000 and posting a 358-195 tour-level record, Kuerten also captured three Grand Slam titles, all of them at Roland Garros.

John McEnroe returned to the Royal Albert Hall in sensational style on Thursday with a 7-5, 6-4 victory over long-time rival Mats Wilander. 

It was McEnroe’s first chance to sample ‘Aegon Crowd Call’, the human line-calling system which sees spectators holding up cards which read ‘in’ or ‘out’. McEnroe is a big fan. 

‘This was an opportunity for all these fans in here to right all the wrongs from my career,’ he said. ‘I just love it, why couldn’t this have happened sooner? I’d have won a lot more titles.’

So with a little help from a sympathetic crowd, McEnroe got the better of his old rival Wilander, showing frequent glimpses of his trademark guile and court-craft to battle past the wily Swede in two straights sets. 

Also on Thursday, Fernando Gonzalez cruised into the final of the Champions Tennis for a second consecutive year after brushing off the challenge of Royal Albert Hall debutante Sebastien Grosjean 7-5, 6-4. Afterwards, Grosjean was forced to withdraw from the rest of the singles because of injury. He will be replaced by Magnus Larsson. 

Before he competes in Sunday’s final, Gonzalez will turn his attention to a first qualifying match for Saturday’s Tie Break Tens event, the new, quick-fire format which is set to launch at the Royal Albert Hall on the night of Saturday 5th December as part of Champions Tennis. Gonzalez will face Younes El Aynaoui, while James Blake will take on Xavier Malisse, with the two winners to face off for the final place in the Tie Break Tens field alongside Andy Murray, John McEnroe, David Ferrer, Kyle Edmund and Tim Henman. 

Jim Westhall Sr., who headed the Volvo International in its days in New Hampshire, Vermont and ultimately Connecticut, passed away on Nov. 26th in North Conway, N.H., the very town that played host to the tournament during its most roseate years. He was 88.

A graduate of Duke University, Westhill began his career in radio and television, including doing play-by-play for Dartmouth football. He was an assistant to New Hampshire Congressman Louis C. Wyman, and later worked for a communications law firm and a national airline. As owner/tournament director, Westhall took a fledgling event that Bud Collins dubbed “Wimbledon of the Woods” and Rod Laver called “a little old country hit” and transformed it into a showcase for some of the world’s top players. Among the titlists during Westhall’s run were Laver, Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe, Andre Agassi, Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker.

The Volvo International was originally played on the outdoor clay courts of Bretton Woods (1973-74) and North Conway (1975-84) in New Hampshire, before moving to the hard courts of Stratton Mountain Resort in Vermont (1985-89).

“He had no experience in tennis, but he clearly had a mind for promotion,” said longtime Haverford College men’s coach Sean Sloane, who served as Westhall’s head referee and adviser from the very start. “He was quite an innovator. I think a lot of other tournaments have copied stuff that he started.”

“Jim Westhall was a showman,” said Bill Norris, a longtime trainer with the ATP World Tour. “He had great ideas. He really made his mark in tennis in the early ‘70s. There was really no template for being a tournament director back in those days. It was the infancy of the professional game.”

In 1990, Westhall was instrumental in moving the event, later known as the Pilot Pen International, to New Haven, Conn., making it the state’s first major tennis tournament. In its first two years there, the US Open tune-up attracted 265,000 spectators.

Westhall led a push for expansion of the Connecticut Tennis Center at Yale (today the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center), which upon completion was the second largest tennis stadium in the world (15,000 capacity).

“When he moved to Connecticut, that was huge,” said Sloane. “He wanted to stay in upper New England, but he also wanted the tournament to continue to grow. He knew the risk he was taking by going to New Haven.”

“North Conway was the most special place — at the bottom of Mount Cranmore,” remembered Norris. “He used to transport players by helicopter from the tournament hotel because traffic was so heavy. It really had a circus- or county-fair-type feeling. All these great names were playing — Connors, Guillermo Vilas.”

In was at the Volvo International in 1979 that Connors had to be shuttled from North Conway via helicopter to catch a flight to Los Angeles, arriving with only hours to spare before his wife, Patti, gave birth to their son, Brett.

Westhall’s promotional stunts were legendary. He held live draws on the top of Mount Washington, on a boat at sea, with veteran official Frank Hammond in a dive tank, and with help from a skydiver. During his tenure in New Haven, the event was the first to introduce music during changeovers. In 1995, he famously settled a bet with Agassi. The wager? His hair. Westhall said that if Agassi won the title he would allow the future Hall of Famer to cut his famously long locks on court.

According to the New Haven Register, Agassi called it “the thickest, nappiest head of hair I’ve ever seen.”

“I never thought it would happen to me,” said Westhall, who in 2004 authored Nonsense at the Net: A Rags to Riches to Rags Story (Or…How a Little Backwoods Tennis Tournament Made it to the Big Leagues). “But here we are. I’ll do anything to get this tournament to be the best in the world.”

In April 1997, he sold the tournament to a partnership group headed by Butch Buchholz.

He is survived by his wife, Vera, their three children, James, Jr., Suzanne and Lisa, two grandchildren and a great grandson.

Jamie Murray is a man on a mission. Still basking in the glow of his country’s Davis Cup glory last weekend, the Briton is already looking ahead to what could be an even better 2016.

After making the decision to part ways with Australian John Peers at the end of the season, Murray is now focused on finding even more success with former World No. 3 Bruno Soares of Brazil.

“He’s a very experienced player and he’s been at the top of the doubles game for quite a while now,” Murray told The Tennis Podcast this week in London. “I play in the deuce court so I wanted to find someone that was playing in the ad court and Bruno is one of the best in the world on that side. He’s got one of the best returns in the world, and I haven’t really played with a steady returner yet in my career. I thought that those aspects would really match up well with my playing style.”

Having both fallen in their previous Grand Slam final appearances, their mutual goal is clear.

“I think for both of us, our goal, however long the partnership lasts, will be to try to win a Grand Slam doubles title,” Murray said. “Of course you go into every partnership with the best of intentions, and every partnership is different, but we’ll work hard for it.”

This past season was undoubtedly a breakthrough year for Murray, reaching two Grand Slam finals and making his debut at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, before crowning the campaign with Great Britain’s historic triumph in Ghent alongside young brother, Andy.

“It’s been my best year by an absolute mile,” said Murray. “I had a great year with John Peers. We got to the final of Wimbledon and the final of the US Open. I finished the year 7th in the world and we finished 4th in the [Emirates ATP Doubles] team rankings so we got to play at the [Barclays ATP World Tour] Finals for the first time, which was awesome. Then obviously the Davis Cup throughout the whole year has been an incredible experience, topped off in Ghent at the weekend.”

It’s only days since the Murray brothers united to secure victory in the crucial doubles rubber for Great Britain in the Davis Cup final against Belgium, and it’s clear that emotions are still running high.

“It was intense,” said Murray. “I did feel nervous, but it wasn’t actually too bad. I was really looking forward to playing because for me, growing up as a kid, that is what you wanted to do – play in big stadiums in front of a lot of people. I wouldn’t say I played my best ever tennis match, but we focused as hard as we could, tried to just play one point at a time and thankfully we got over the finish line.”

This week, Murray joined up with another legend of the game, seven-time Grand Slam Champion and fellow Davis Cup winner, Mats Wilander, in an exhibition doubles match at the Champions Tennis at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

“It is nice to play with those guys, they are all legends of the game,” said Murray. “It’s been cool to play at the Royal Albert Hall with it being such an iconic venue. You never normally associate it with sports, so it is something different and very cool.”

Next up for Murray is an off-season training in Dubai, where Andy will also be gearing up for the 2016 season.

“Andy will be in Dubai at the same time, but I probably won’t train with him. I’m going with my coach Alan McDonald and Colin Fleming is coming out as well. We’ll probably focus on more doubles specific stuff, and I’ll leave Andy to do the hard work. I can’t honestly claim to train as hard as Andy does. I think from a doubles point of view, it’s a lot more about short, sharp explosive stuff, and not so much about endurance, because you don’t really need it in doubles now with the scoring system on the ATP World Tour.”

New partner Soares is spending the off-season with his family in Brazil, but the pair are planning to make their debut as a team in Doha at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open.

“I know that a lot of hard work has to go into making a partnership work. I hope that we’re both ready to do that and obviously I hope that we can hit the ground running.”