Player Spotlight: Richard Gasquet

Gravity—Swingweight

Mention the name ‘Richard Gasquet’ and there is one shot that comes to mind no matter who you ask: the one-handed backhand. Now in the twilight of his career, Gasquet was once touted as the next great player alongside Rafael Nadal when both were teen prodigies coming on the tour. At just 18-years-old, they were already fighting for some of the biggest trophies in our sport. Take a look at Gasquet’s form in the lead-up to the 2005 French Open (where he again lost to Nadal in the third round).

At 18, many had Gasquet penciled in as a future slam champion alongside Rafael Nadal.

The Gasquet backhand is one of the best of all time, and despite his average stature, one of the heaviest and fastest ever recorded. As I have advocated for in Death of a Forehand- Part I, a common theme in many great groundstrokes is the set-up position with an extended wrist and a high racquet head. By getting the racquet tip upright, the player can drop the racquet head several feet and use gravity to generate initial racquet head speed, and Gasquet does this nearly better than anyone on his backhand.

With this technique, Gasquet’s racquet head is pulled through in a very controlled manner; you can see the wrist never leaves extension, and the swing is executed with the legs, hips, and arms. By using gravity and the bigger muscles of his kinetic chain, it also allows Gasquet to wield a pretty beefy racquet; reportedly with a swingweight of 381.¹

When you combine the kind of swing and racquet specs Gasquet employs, you end up averaging more rpm’s than any other backhand on tour, as Twitter user @Vestige_du_jour displayed in his graph that collected topspin rates from a range of tournaments in 2018:

Of course, he is equally capable of flattening it out and injecting some serious pace. Check out this 103mph shot below, as Robbie Koenig rightly points out, “I don’t often say those two words together, ‘vaoprize’ and ‘backhand’, but with Gasquet it’s definitely the case”:

Gasquet’s career may not have shone as brightly as some predicted—he lacked a great serve or forehand and played in an era of the Big-4—but any player looking to model the one-handed backhand would do well to observe the Frenchman’s trademark shot.

1. The specs listed come from impactingtennis.com and this google sheet.

For more information on swingweight, you can go to tennis warehouse learning centre