The knock on Richard Gasquet has long been his inability to play the big matches, to overcome higher-ranked opponents, even when he has the weapons to defeat them. David Ferrer is the sort of guy who eats such players for lunch. One might figure the Frenchman would win a set, but not that he would find his way into the semifinals of a Grand Slam.
For two sets today, Gasquet played as well as I’ve ever seen him play. He combined patience with his devastating down-the-line backhand, waiting eight, ten, or more shots before the opportunities arose to unleash the monster.
What’s remarkable is that most conventional stats don’t bear this out. He barely got half of his first serves in. He hit a mere seven winners in the first set, against a dozen unforced errors. But he coaxed plenty of mistakes out of an opponent who doesn’t often make many.
Gasquet was able to race to his two-set lead in large part because Ferrer wasn’t playing his best tennis. The tactics looked familiar, but Ferru wasn’t quite as aggressive as usual, letting Gasquet earn those opportunities to strike. Ferrer hit only three winners in the entire second set.
The next two sets fulfilled everyone’s expectations. Despite his five-set triumph over Milos Raonic, Gasquet’s history suggests he would mentally fade, and perhaps physically give out long before Ferrer would. As the Spaniard piled on the breaks, those forecasts appeared to come true.
Ferrer’s success against Gasquet’s serve tells the story. While failing to win more than 30% of return points in the first two sets, suddenly he won half of Gasquet’s service points. With Gasquet playing more listlessly, settling in further back in the court, a couple of breaks were plenty.
It would have been easy for the Frenchman to go away in the fifth set; he’s done it before. Ferrer’s reputation precedes him, and certainly, he showed no signs of physically weakening as the match went into its fifth hour.
But Gasquet dug out of a 15-30 hole to win his opening service game; he fought past two deuces and a break point to win his second. With both players settling in for a grind, the turning point came on Gasquet’s only break point of the deciding set, when Ferrer double-faulted to give his opponent a 5-2 advantage.
Thanks to a couple of errors from Ferrer in the final game and a big serve on match point, the Spaniard never had another opportunity. Gasquet moves to the semifinals and a probable date with Rafael Nadal.
It was only Gasquet’s second win against Ferrer in nine meetings, and only his seventh career win in a five-setter. His only previous five-set win against a higher-ranked opponent was in his only prior Grand Slam quarterfinal, in 2007 at Wimbledon against Andy Roddick.
And now, after winning his second Grand Slam fourth-round match in 17 tries, he moves to a perfect 2-0 in quarterfinals.
Here are my complete serve, return, and rally length stats for the match.
I’d love to see stats for Wawrinka’s winners and UEs off the BH and FH yesterday in his win over Berdych to compare to Gasquet’s total today against Ferrer: I can’t imagine too many others could hit as many BH winners as these two guys and suspect Stan hit more W’s off the FH than Richard, but would like to know. I’m looking forward to see if he can keep up his game against Nadal. The wind didn’t seem to bother either yesterday, but Rafa is a very good wind layer, thanks to his topspin and thoughtful wind tactics.