French tennis player Richard Gasquet, aged 38, will retire after the Roland-Garros tournament in May or June 2025, he announced in an interview published in the newspaper L’Equipe on Thursday.
“I am announcing to you that I will stop at Roland-Garros (May 25 – June 8, 2025) next year. I think it is the best time for me to do it. It is the best tournament to do it. It’s magnificent, we’re lucky being French to be able to stop in these kinds of incredible places,” explains Gasquet.
“I will be almost 39 years old, a canonical age, I would never have imagined playing so much starting so young,” adds the Frenchman who will therefore stop after 23 years of career, he who turned professional in 2002 at only 15 years old. This racquet genius, on the front page of Tennis Magazine at the age of 9, caused a sensation by winning his first match on the main circuit in Monte-Carlo at the age of 15 against the Argentinian Franco Squillari.
With his silky one-handed backhand, Richard Gasquet has won 16 tournaments on the main circuit, the last in Auckland (New Zealand) in January 2023. He reached 7th world ranking in 2007.
Like the three other “musketeers” of French tennis (Gaël Monfils, still a player, Gilles Simon and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, retired), Gasquet will not have succeeded in lifting a Grand Slam trophy.
He reached three semi-finals at Major: at Wimbledon in 2007, eliminated by Roger Federer, at the US Open in 2013, beaten by Rafael Nadal, then again at Wimbledon in 2015, eliminated by Novak Djokovic.
rg/lpa
