‘Mozart of tennis’ Gasquet bows out in Paris

French Open 2025

Location: Roland Garros, May 25 – June

Richard Gasquet took a significant step forward with just one small step, Jannik Sinner’s.

The Frenchman’s playing career came to an end when he defeated Gasquet, 38, 6 (6) 6-4, to win the match on Court Philippe Chatrier.

Nearly 30 years after Gasquet’s famous terracotta court performance was first brought to the attention of the country, Roland Garros’ terracotta courts served as a fitting setting for the sentimental farewell.

His ravishing backhand will be Gasquet’s lasting legacy. His success will be largely determined by the joy his signature shot brought, especially to the adoring French public, not by Slam wins.

Gasquet’s backhand was ranked as the fifth-best single-hander of the Open era by Tennis.com in 2023.

It referred to it as possibly “the most visually appealing one-handed backhand drive of that time.” Only the top three scorers, Stan Wawrinka, Ken Rosewall, Justine Henin, and Federer, outnumber Gasquet.

When the then-President of the French Tennis Federation, Lionel Faujare, compared a 15-year-old Gasquet to Mozart, not without reason.

It was difficult to live up to the billing standard.

When he was 12 years old, he defeated Rafael Nadal in the junior Les Petits As competition, but the result was 18-0 in Nadal’s favor. Novak Djokovic had a 1-13 record against him and Roger Federer had a 2-19 record.

Tatiana Golovin and Gasquet won the senior mixed doubles at Roland Garros as teenagers in 2004 and the French Open and US Open junior singles titles.

He won 16 ATP titles, a Davis Cup with France in 2017, and an Olympic doubles bronze medal at London 2012, and he also won two Grand Slam semi-finals, including two at Wimbledon.

He successfully argued that he was unknowingly contaminated after kissing a woman, known as Pamela, in a Miami nightclub after testing positive for cocaine in March 2009.

He placed seventh in the world rankings, matching Federer’s record-setting ATP victories in 24 straight seasons.

Franck Ramella, the tennis writer and biographer for L’Equipe, writes:

He seems content with his career, I believe. because he never claimed to be the champion of the world.

He never lived up to what others had hoped for him to be. The expectations were what made things complicated for him.

There was a lot of hope,” he said. There’s a sort of failure syndrome [in French tennis] because we’ve been waiting for a men’s champion since Yannick Noah [in 1983] at Roland Garros. So we put a lot of faith and intensity into it as soon as someone can win. He had a strong faith in France.