Gasquet Faces Up Against Haase
Richard Gasquet will take on Robin Haase of Netherlands in the first round of the Gerry Weber Open tomorrow. It’s going to be the third encounter between these two players. Both the previous ones had gone Gasquet’s way.
As far as Gasquet’s recent form is concerned, he got knocked out from the third round of the recently finished French Open, but, that was not such a bad performance considering the fact that he had entered the tournament with no match practice at all. He was getting recovered from his back problem in the weeks prior to the tournament.
On the contrary, Haase has featured in a lot of clay court competitions in the recent past. He hasn’t won that much in those competitions though, but, he at least has considerable amount of match practice in his stride.
However, since the tournament is going to be played on grass courts, it’s a different ball game altogether. Gasquet is a far better player than his opponent on the green surfaces and thus, will certainly hold the advantage.
The only thing that can go against Gasquet is that Haase is a big hitter and he is fully capable of capitalizing on the room that would be created on the court because of the Frenchman trying to hang back. But, the question is if he would be able to do that accurately on the day.
The last time that these two players had locked horns with each other on grass court, Gasquet had steam rolled over Haase. He can do something similar again if he is at his best.
There is a big difference between the world rankings of the two players with Gasquet being 41 positions higher than his 27 year old Dutch opponent.
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HIGH EXPECTATIONS
The brand of tennis that Richard Gasquet had played in the latter half of the last season, the expectations were high from him at the start of this season.
The experts were of the opinion that the Frenchman had finally developed himself as a player and 2014 might turn out to be the year in which he would make his way into the top 3, but, so far, Gasquet has disappointed everybody. Almost one fourth of the ongoing season is already over and he has not won any title so far.
Till this point of time last year, Gasquet had a couple of trophies under his belt.
In total, Gasquet has taken part in four events this year and barring Open Sud de France where he made it to the final, he has suffered an early exit in all the other tournaments and that’s something which was unexpected from him.
However, still, a good number of matches are to be played this season. So, Gasquet can put things in place for himself, but, he needs drastic improvement in his form.
Gasquet is currently in Indian Wells to feature in the BNP Paribas Open which is probably the most prestigious event after the Grand Slams. He will play his first match in that tournament tomorrow against Teymuraz Gabashvili of Russia.
This will be the third time that Gasquet and Gabashvili will face each other. On the previous two occasions, the Russian had ended up losing and he would not want that to happen third time in a row.
If Gasquet gets knocked out early from the BNP Paribas Open as well, he would probably lose his place in top 10 in the ATP rankings.
Currently, Gasquet is the no. 9 player in the world.
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