18 hours ago
4
French Open 2025
Dates: 25 May-8 June Venue: Roland Garros
Coverage: Live radio commentary on BBC 5 Sports Extra, plus live text commentaries on the BBC Sport website and app
One small step for Jannik Sinner marked one giant leap into a new life for Richard Gasquet.
World number one Sinner's 6-3 6-0 6-4 victory over the 38-year-old Gasquet marked the end of the Frenchman's playing career.
The terracotta courts of Roland Garros provided a fitting setting for the fond farewell, almost 30 years after Gasquet first came to the nation's attention.
Gasquet's legacy will be his ravishing backhand. His career will be measured not by Slam wins but largely by the pleasure his signature shot brought, particularly to the adoring French public.
In 2023, the Tennis.com website ranked Gasquet's backhand as the fifth greatest single-hander of the Open era.
It described it as possibly "the most aesthetically pleasing one-handed backhand drive" of that period. Only major winners Stan Wawrinka, Ken Rosewall, Justine Henin and Federer, occupying top spot, outranked Gasquet.
It was not for nothing that a 15-year-old Gasquet was compared to Mozart by then French Tennis Federation president Lionel Faujare.
"When I stop, even after 10 years, I'll still be able to hit backhands," Gasquet said in April .
Gasquet became famous in France at the age of nine, when Tennis Magazine put him on their cover, with the headline: "Richard G. Nine years old. The champion France has been waiting for?"
Living up to the billing was a daunting assignment.
Aged 12, he beat Rafael Nadal in the junior Les Petits As tournament, but as a professional the head-to-head was 18-0 in Nadal's favour. He was 2-19 against Roger Federer and 1-13 against Novak Djokovic.
Gasquet won French Open and US Open junior singles titles, and the senior mixed doubles as a 17-year-old at Roland Garros in 2004 with Tatiana Golovin.
He reached three Grand Slam semi-finals, including two at Wimbledon, and won 16 ATP titles, a Davis Cup in 2017 with France and an Olympic doubles bronze at London 2012.
In March 2009, he tested positive for cocaine and was provisionally banned for a year but later cleared, successfully arguing he was unknowingly contaminated after kissing a woman, known as Pamela, in a Miami nightclub.
He reached seventh in the world rankings and matched a Federer record - winning matches in 24 consecutive seasons at ATP level.
But the backhand - that was everything.
Franck Ramella, Gasquet's biographer and tennis writer for L'Equipe:
"I think he is happy with his career. Because he never wanted or ever claimed to be the ultimate champion.
"He never recognised himself in what others expected of him. What was complicated for him was the expectations.
"We had a lot of hope. We've been waiting for a men's champion since Yannick Noah [in 1983] at Roland Garros, so there's a kind of failure syndrome [in French tennis]. So as soon as someone can win, we put a lot of intensity into it, a lot of belief. France really believed in him.
"Every time he lost or didn't make it to the final, there was disappointment but he was incredibly good."
