Richard Gasquet fires at wrong time for Andy Murray
If Andy Murray looked to have drawn one of the toughest first round matches of any of the men’s seeds at the French Open, then Richard Gasquet’s title winning performance at the Open de Nice Cote D’Azur over the weekend has confirmed it.
Fourth seeded Murray drew the unseeded Frenchman as his first round opponent at Roland Garros – a tricky enough assignment for a player in the process of regaining form - but Gasquet’s victory over the in-form Fernando Verdasco in the final in Nice ramps up the degree of difficulty for the Scot as he continues his quest for a maiden Grand Slam title.
Gasquet, a former top 10 player, found himself ranked 68th in the world when the French Open draw was released on Friday, and was perhaps always going to be one of the more dangerous floaters in the draw.
Not nearly on a par with Justine Henin’s wildcard lottery early in the second tournament of her return to tennis, the 2010 Australian Open, from a retirement that lasted less than two years. But Gasquet is to the men’s draw what 2008 champion and now 41st ranked Ana Ivanovic, who seems to have recaptured some of her old confidence in her last couple of tournaments, is to the women’s draw in Paris this year, and that’s the kind of player no seed would want to face in the first round.
If Murray is to find some sort of solace in Gasquet’s 6-3, 5-7, 7-6(5) victory over world No. 9 Verdasco in the Nice final, perhaps it’s the hope that in winning the sixth tournament of his career, Gasquet may have exhausted some of his energy reserves heading into his home Grand Slam.
"I couldn't have been more tired at the end and I really gave everything to the match. It is a title, my sixth, and it has been a long time since I won my last ATP World Tour title,” Gasquet said after the match.
The question now is whether he’ll feel the lingering impact of that hard-fought victory, and the leg problems that hampered him in the final, in the first round at Roland Garros, or whether instead he’ll carry with him the return to form that has won him his first title since 2007.
The 23-year-old has now broken a losing streak against top-10 players that had stretched beyond the 12-month mark, and his defeat of French counterpart Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the Rome Masters 1000 in May last year. It’s also his first top-10 victory for Gasquet since his suspension in mid-2009 for testing positive for cocaine (he was later cleared of doping offences by the Court of Arbitration for Sport).
It’s a return to form for the former world No. 7 that couldn’t have come at a worse time for Murray, who has struggled to recapture the brand of tennis that took him to the final of the Australian Open in the months that have followed.
Murray’s first round match against Gasquet now very much shapes as a staunch test of just how much of his early 2010 form the dual Grand Slam runner-up has recaptured.
We’ll find out soon enough.
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