THE MAN WITH THE BEAUTIFUL BACKHAND CALLS TIME

Richard Gasquet will end his 22-year professional career after Roland-Garros.

Richard Gasquet, one of the tennis professionals fans most like to watch, will hang up his HEAD racquet after this year’s Roland-Garros, nearly 23 years after turning professional as a 16-year-old.

The 38-year-old Frenchman, who endorses the Extreme range of HEAD racquets, is calling time on a career that has seen him win 16 singles titles on all surfaces, two doubles titles, a Davis Cup winner’s medal, and reach the semi-finals of Wimbledon. He had a career-high ranking of seven in 2007.

But numerical achievements are only part of the Gasquet story. For many tennis fans, he stood for beauty and elegance in his stroke-making. He had an all-court game that worked in singles and doubles, but his biggest feature was his one-handed backhand, the ball flying off his strings as he wielded his racquet like a flashing blade.

His greatest single match was the Wimbledon quarter-final of 2007. Trailing by two sets to the third seed and twice former finalist Andy Roddick, Gasquet started playing more aggressively, won the third and fourth sets on tiebreaks, and then broke in the 14th game of the fifth set for an 8-6 win. The match statistics show the 21-year-old Frenchman hit 93 winners.

Gasquet, who grew up in Beziers on France’s Mediterranean coast, played his career under the immense pressure of unreasonable expectation. At the age of nine, he was featured on the front cover of France’s Tennis magazine as the future of French tennis. Given a wildcard into his first professional tournament, the 2002 Monte Carlo Masters, aged 16, he beat Franco Squillari in three sets to heighten expectations still further.

Three years later, Gasquet beat Roger Federer in Monte Carlo in a bizarre three-setter played on the day of Prince Rainier III’s funeral, in which the Frenchman saved a match point.

Having spent most of 2007 in the top ten and qualified for that year’s season-ending Tennis Masters Cup (now the ATP Finals), some will see the rest of Gasquet’s career as mildly disappointing. But despite various injuries, he remained a regular in the top 30 for most of the subsequent ten years, and was always a popular and dangerous player. He was always very keen to represent his country, and played in the 2014 and 2017 Davis Cup finals, picking up a winner’s replica trophy in 2017.

Thomas Bischof, HEAD’s director of Pro Players, said, “We pay tribute to Richard at the end of a highly impressive career. He has been a beautiful player to watch, one of the world’s most consistent achievers, and a great ambassador for HEAD racquets. It has been a pleasure to have him as part of the HEAD family, and we wish him the very best in the future. If he can teach his backhand to a few juniors, we will continue to profit from his wonderful aestheticism.”

Explore more iconic moments on clay.