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The 37-year-old Richard Gasquet failed to defend his Auckland title, falling in the first round to Arthur Fils. The veteran will drop 250 ATP points next Monday and drop out from the top-100 for the first time since April 2005!
Gasquet embraced 956 consecutive weeks in the mentioned group, standing as the leader among the active players since Rafael Nadal ended his brilliant streak last year. Now, the Frenchman will find himself outside the top-100 for the first time in almost 19 years, and it will be challenging for him to return in the rest of the season.
Richard entered the top-100 in September 2003 at 17. However, he struggled with injuries in the next couple of seasons before establishing himself as a top-100 player again in the spring of 2005. Over the years, an injury-prone player had a couple of rough periods, struggling but surviving in the top-100 and extending his streak.
Gasquet grabbed 26 victories in 2022, finishing in the top-70 and notching another year-end top-100 season, his 18th in a row. The Frenchman was the quarter-finalist in Montpellier, Marrakech and Estoril before embracing the semi-final run in Geneva.
Richard Gasquet will leave the top-100 after 956 consecutive weeks.
The former semi-finalist reached the third round at Wimbledon and scored three victories in Winston-Salem ahead of the US Open. Gasquet met his old rival Nadal in the third round in New York, with Rafa scoring a 6-0, 6-1, 7-5 victory in two hours and 17 minutes.
That result was enough to keep Richard in the top-100, and he earned the Davis Cup victories for France later in September, still giving his best in the national jersey. Gasquet embraced a busy indoor swing in the season’s closing stages to secure a year-end top-70 spot.
Richard’s second ATP semi-final of the season came in Antwerp, beating Stan Wawrinka, Dominic Stricker and David Goffin. He fell to Felix Auger-Aliassime in two tie breaks and missed a chance to play in his first ATP final since Umag last year.
Gasquet wrapped up the season at the home Masters 1000 event in Paris, beating Alex Molcan before falling to world no. 4 Casper Ruud.
Richard made a thrilling start to the 2023 season, lifting his first ATP title in four and a half years in Auckland and securing more top-100 weeks. The results were absent in the upcoming months, and the Frenchman started mixing the ATP Tour with Challengers.
Gasquet riched the quarter-final in Stuttgart and Winston-Salem, finishing the season ranked 76th and needing another good result in Auckland at the start of 2024. Instead, he fell to the young Frenchman Arthur Fils 6-3, 6-4 in 69 minutes, losing massive points and ending his top-100 journey.
