Richard Gasquet: The almost man

Gasquet has been French tennis almost man. Mixing up superb performances which often provide shock victories with lack lustred ones leaving him well beaten in the next match. He seems to suffer from persistent inconsistency. Even this year, he has caused significant upsets in  the Australian open where he beat ninth seed Serbian Janko Tipsarevic in straight set only to be well beaten in the next round by Spanish number two David Ferrer. On top of this he also lost again to David Ferrer after beating Andy Murray in a shock result.

Gasquet famously lost in the final of the Mercedes cup in Stuttgart after a string of incredible performances top then teenager out massive outsider Del Potro. Ranked at 45 in the world, which is down from his career high of 7^th, Gasquet is a real package and often his ranking is not reflected of his raw talent. One his day he is as good as anyone and can blow his opponent apart with an effective attacking game. However these good days are few and far between and often gapped between a number of poor performances.

The Twenty Five year old seems to be able to turn his ability on and off, often coming back from one terrible set to win the next in extreme fashion, the only concern is that it’s not clear who has the ability to turn it on as certainly Gasquet doesn’t seem to be able to do it over a long enough period to secure him some silverware. With his level of inconsistency, he will surely never win a grand slam until he can put all his good performances spread over the year into one tournament, but with the grand slams monopolised by the world top three players, it is doubtful the Frenchman will ever be able to win more than an upset in the earlier rounds before being well beaten himself.