Once called the “little Mozart of French tennis,” Richard Gasquet is preparing to finish his career without a Grand Slam title.
At 38 years old, the French player, known for his amazing one-handed backhand, announced to L’Equipe newspaper on Thursday that he will retire after the French Open, where he hopes to play in front of his home crowd.
“I’ll be stopping at Roland Garros next year,” Gasquet said. “I think this is the best time for me to do it. It’s the best tournament to do it. It’s wonderful, and we’re lucky as Frenchmen to be able to retire in such unbelievable places.
The end is always complicated, as all the former great players have often told me. You never know when, how, where. As far as I’m concerned, it was obvious.”
Gasquet reached his highest ranking of No. 7 in 2007 and was once seen as a potential Grand Slam champion, but he never made it past the semifinals in any major tournament.
He reached the Wimbledon semifinals twice and also made it to the semifinals at the U.S. Open. He won 16 Tour titles, with his latest victory last year in Auckland, and was part of the French team that won the Davis Cup in 2017.
Following fellow players Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gilles Simon, Gasquet is the third talented player from a generation of French athletes that appeared nearly 20 years ago, which also includes Gaël Monfils, to announce his retirement.
Gasquet, who is now ranked No. 133, mentioned that he never thought he would play for so long, starting at the age of 3 with his father, Francis, who owned a tennis club.
“I play against 18-19 year olds, which is weird,” he said. “Nineteen years younger sounds crazy. Very few players make it to 38.”
Gasquet, who has played 1,005 matches since turning professional, won his first Tour match at 16 at the Monte-Carlo Masters in 2002. Years earlier, when he was just nine, Gasquet appeared on the cover of Tennis Magazine, which asked in a headline: “The champion that France is waiting for?”
When he turned pro, Gasquet was often compared to another rising star, Rafael Nadal.
