The ordeal is not over for Richard Gasquet, but the Frenchman finds fleeting sanctuary back on the tennis court on Wednesday — the one place where he has really been able to be himself.
By one of those quirks in which grand-slam tournaments specialise, the 23-year-old meets Rafael Nadal in the first round of the US Open. It is a match of piquancy because the Spaniard spoke up loudest when traces of cocaine were discovered in Gasquet’s urine sample in Miami in March.
The Frenchman faced a two-year ban and appealed to an independent tribunal, which accepted his version that the drug had been passed to him by kissing a girl in a nightclub and reduced his ban to two months.
It remains one of the oddest of cases and one that is not closed, for the ITF and World Anti-Doping Agency have combined to challenge the propriety of the judgment. Gasquet is free to continue playing, but under heightened scrutiny, and Nadal knows exactly what that is like. Despite his unblemished record, the former world No 1 has often had to defend himself against whispers that his remarkable physical development must have been drug-enhanced.
Nadal has faced more questions than anyone in the build-up to this championship, about the condition of his knees, which caused him to miss defending his Wimbledon title, but he believes that a wrong has been done to Gasquet. “I talked with him about what happened, he told me he didn’t take anything and I believe him 100 per cent,” Nadal said. “I have known him a long time.”
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It is not as if there have been deafening levels of support for the former French No 1, which he prefers not to dwell upon. “This is a new start for me,” Gasquet said yesterday. “Two years of competition on the circuit is less draining than the three months of hell I’ve gone through.
“You have to be a sadomasochist to want to play him [Nadal] at any time, but I’m very motivated. Rafa supported me more than anyone in the last few months and if he ever needs me to help him, I will do what I can. I’ll never forget what he’s done for me. Now I just want to get out and play.”
How Gasquet would love to replicate the flourish of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, his compatriot, on Tuesday. Against a fresh-faced American wild card, Chase Buchanan, the world No 7 dropped three games and is obviously full of beans after his victory over Roger Federer in last month’s Masters event in Montreal. “I didn’t leave a lot of energy on the court, so it’s a good start for me,” Tsonga said.
Of the 11 American men scheduled to appear on the Open’s second day, one had a couple of hours to savour. Jesse Witten, from Naples, Florida, does not fit the physical Identikit of the modern tennis player, looking more like an army recruit than lithe athlete, yet he ran Igor Andreev, the No 29 seed from Russia, ragged in a 6-4, 6-0, 6-2 victory.
Witten said that he did not feel in the slightest overwhelmed against a player who has been to a quarter-final of a grand-slam tournament. “I’ve played really well in the last couple of weeks and I’m not sure why,” he said.
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Venus Williams was within three points of a first-round defeat and Dinara Safina trailed 3-0 and 4-2 in the final set to an Australian on her grand-slam tournament debut, but both clung on to survive yesterday.
Too often in the recent past, scorecards at the US Open Championships have been littered with 6-0 and 6-1 sets in the women’s event, leading to the assertion that they were claiming equal prize money under false pretences. Bucking the trend, it is the victories for Roger Federer, Andy Roddick and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the Nos 1, 5 and 7 seeds, in the opening round of the men’s tournament that have been akin to a jog around Central Park.
Safina was wretched yesterday, but the importance of the occasion dawned on Olivia Rogowska, 18, a country girl from Victoria whose inability to see off the No 1 had more to do with errors on her part than any substantive quality from the Russian.
Safina has had to put up with much questioning of her right to be the best player in the world when she has not won a grand-slam tournament, but on Arthur Ashe Stadium, one wondered who was the No 1 and who the No 167. The errors stacked like the rubbish on New York street corners.
Rogowska blew her last chance when she double-faulted when holding game point to lead 5-4 in the final set.
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Melanie Oudin, the 17-year-old from the southern state of Georgia, who reached the second week of this year’s Wimbledon, was in inspired form yesterday, defeating Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, of Russia, 6-1, 6-2.