Richard Gasquet, underachiever to some but beloved to more, plays his last tournament

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It feels fitting that Richard Gasquet’s actual retirement at Roland Garros will be overshadowed by a ceremony for Rafael Nadal, which commemorated a retirement that already happened.

Both prodigies broke through on tour in 2005, and they squared off twice that year. Their first meeting was in Monte Carlo, one round after Gasquet stunned the tennis world with a dramatic, 10-8 in-the-third triumph over Roger Federer. The upset, still discussed many years later, was capped when Gasquet ripped a down-the-line winner with his iconic one-handed backhand. Would this flashy Frenchman make good on the hype that surrounded him since he graced the cover of a tennis magazine at age 9?

Maybe things would have turned out differently for Gasquet if he’d beaten Nadal that day. Maybe not. But Nadal would prevail, and go on to win his first ATP Masters 1000 title, before the two met again at Roland Garros. It was a highly anticipated third-round collision; their Monte Carlo semifinal went the distance, and the rematch was in Gasquet’s backyard. But Nadal won that match too, convincingly this time, en route to claiming his first Grand Slam title.

Rafa would go on to win 22 Grand Slam tiles and 36 ATP Masters 1000s—along with all 18 matches he played against Gasquet. Richard would not win a single trophy above the 250 level. But it wasn’t for lack of effort, something his natural-born skill perhaps belied. For as much as Gasquet endeared himself to fans with his luxurious one-hander, he earned respect with his longevity.

To be focused on my mental and physical condition, that’s why I’ve been able to play for 20 years. Richard Gasquet

Over nearly 24 seasons, Gasquet would win 16 ATP singles titles—his first coming in 2005, his penultimate in 2018, and his last five years later—and reached another 17 finals. Linked to clay given his French upbringing and early-career success on the surface, Gasquet flourished, often with flourishes, on faster courts. Two of his three Grand Slam semifinal appearances came at Wimbledon (2007 and 2015), with the other at the US Open (2013).

His opponents in those matches? In order, Federer, Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Gasquet didn’t win a single set between them.

He did win 609 matches, though, including final-round runs at three Masters events: Madrid—when it was played on an indoor hard court—in 2005, and twice on Canadian hard courts in 2006 and 2012. He reached five other Masters semifinals.

Gasquet’s most notable victory may have been far away from singles play: in doubles, and as part of a team. In the 2017 Davis Cup Final, he paired with Pierre-Hugues Herbert to give France a pivotal 2-1 lead over Belgium.

“We didn’t even practice a set together,” Gasquet, a late substitute on the team, recalled to Belgium’s David Goffin years later. “I wasn’t prepared to play doubles at all, and even less with Pierre-Hugues.”

Les Bleus would go on to win its first title in the international competition since 2001.

“No offense,” Gasquet would say to Goffin, “but if we had lost to Belgium at home, I think I would have had to go into exile after that.”

No matter his level of achievement in the sport, Gasquet was always a crowd favorite. And not just in France, where provincial ties run deep.

“It’s really, really nice to come to the United States,” Gasquet told me at Roland Garros last May, recalling his time spent at Indian Wells, Miami and the US Open. “I can remember Orange Bowl as a child, and playing many great champions—Roddick, Agassi. Great memories in the U.S.; I have lot of fans.”

You can count me as one of them. While Gasquet’s second-round, retirement-aided win over 236^th-ranked Giorgio Galimberti at the 2005 US Open likely isn’t among anyone else’s most cherished tennis memories, it’s a personally indelible moment. It was one of the first professional tennis matches I ever saw in person, and it helped light the fuse for, in some ways, my entire career. It’s unlikely that I’m editing TENNIS.com today without having started the “Gasquet and Racquet” blog in 2006.

Boasting new, content-grabbing technology, I made sure to track Gasquet when I returned to Flushing Meadows a year later.

“Oh, one-hander’s going to look good for the website,” you can hear me say, awestruck, in this pre-iPhone video of Gasquet’s warm-up with Phillip Simmonds:

One year ago, I was fortunate to watch Gasquet warm-up again at a major, on Court Philippe Chatrier. His most recent title had come on the ATP Challenger Tour—in doing so, he became the third-oldest Challenger champion ever—and he was ranked outside the Top 120. But the veteran nonetheless drew a sizable crowd for his pre-tournament practice session. There were probably more fans watching Gasquet that day than those who saw him play at tournaments earlier that year in Noumea, New Caledonia; Manama, Bahrain; and Szekesfehevar, Hungary.

Grand ambition may have passed Gasquet by, but as evidenced by his travel schedule in his late 30s, clearly not his love for the game.

“When you are doing a warm-up, when I’m practicing, when you are doing rehab—even when you going to sleep—to play tennis, you need to be focused as much as you can,” Gasquet explained the next day. “To be focused on my mental and physical condition, that’s why I’ve been able to play for 20 years.”

Gasquet said he hoped to return to the Top 100, but he never did. Injuries and form have conspired to see him win just three times on tour in 2025, but the 38-year-old undeniably earned his wild card into this year’s tournament. He will say au revoir to the sport he has played since he was 4, to thousands of fans at Roland Garros, and tens of thousands more watching around the globe.

His farewell in France may last just one match—or maybe he’ll go a round further than Rafa did at his final Roland Garros. It’s not like Gasquet hasn’t made Paris go wild as a wild card before.