Gasquet reached the Wimbledon semifinals twice and was also a semifinalist at the U.S Open. He claimed 16 Tour titles, most recently last year in Auckland, and was a member of the France team that won the 2017 Davis Cup.
Following in the footsteps of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gilles Simon, he is the third member of a gifted generation of French players that emerged nearly 20 years ago — which also includes Gaël Monfils— to call it quits.
Gasquet, who has dropped to the No. 133 spot, said he would never have imagined playing for so long after starting when he was 3 years old with his father, Francis, who ran a tennis club.
“I play against 18-19 year olds, which is weird,” he said “”Nineteen years younger sounds crazy. Very few players make it to 38.”
Gasquet, who has played 1,005 matches since he turned professional, won his Tour debut match at 16 at the Monte-Carlo Masters back in 2002. A few years earlier, when he was just nine years old, Gasquet was on the cover of Tennis Magazine, which asked in a headline: “The champion that France is waiting for?”
