His conqueror that day was a Spaniard, a good friend who secured his first Grand Slam title, and a man who sparked a wave of future Spanish success on the terre battue.
In his runner-up speech from that final in 1993, Courier joked with the crowd he had on this occasion fallen to a “vache espagnole”.
“That’s right, I lost to a Spanish cow,” he told rolandgarros.com. “It’s funny because Sergi and I were good friends. We’d played doubles together. We had a very friendly relationship so he took it the right way, which is nice. He’s a great champion, a two-time champion at Roland-Garros, an excellent player across his career. We had a lot of battles and he got me in that final. It was a great match.”
Spanish influence
Bruguera showed he was no flash in the pan when he successfully defended his title in 1994.
He defeated future Grand Slam champion Pat Rafter in the fourth round, and fourth-seeded Ukrainian Andrei Medvedev in the quarter-finals that year without conceding a set.
Seeded sixth, he ran into Courier for the second year running and once again got the better of the American, this time in a four-set semi-final.
In an all-Spanish final, the unseeded Alberto Berasategui managed to take a set before the reigning champion hammered home his dominance at his best major on his best surface.
On the 30th anniversary of Bruguera’s second triumph, Courier hailed the Spaniard’s influence, particularly on his compatriots for whom he raised the bar on how to master clay-court tennis.