Top 10 Matches of 2015, No. 4: Richard the...Lion-Hearted?

What do we do now that the 2015 season is over and tennis is in its all-too-brief December recess? Go back and watch the best matches of the year, of course. Over the next two weeks, I’ll count down my 10 favorite contests, accompanied by video highlights, of this season.

No. 10: The Day the Circus Came to Town—Kyrgios d. Federer, Madrid
No. 9: New York Knockdown—Azarenka d. Kerber, U.S. Open
No. 8: Cup Runneth Over, and Over, and Over—Mayer d. Souza, Davis Cup
No. 7: Stan Mans Up—Wawrinka d. Djokovic, Roland Garros
No. 6: Simona Finds the Power—Halep d. Azarenka, U.S. Open
No. 5: Sending the Open Into Orbit—Fognini d. Nadal, U.S. Open
No. 4: Richard the...Lion-Hearted?—Gasquet d. Wawrinka, Wimbledon
No. 3: The Serena & Simona Show—Williams d. Halep, Miami
*No. 2: Vincanity—Vinci d. Williams, U.S. Open

No. 1: Fierce and Fiercer—Williams d. Azarenka, Wimbledon<em>*</em>

Tennis had its share of feel-good stories this year. There were, among others, Andy Murray's Davis Cup heroics, Lleyton Hewitt's long good-bye, and the just-between-friends U.S. Open between final Flavia Pennetta and Roberta Vinci. And then there was Richard Gasquet's quarterfinal win at Wimbledon.

Perhaps you’ve forgotten that one? It’s true that the much-maligned Frenchman’s unlikely tale of triumph lasted just two days. But that was long enough for him to win the fourth-best match of the season, 6-4, 4-6, 3-6, 6-4, 11-9, over a heavily favored Stan Wawrinka, in a hailstorm of shotmaking brilliance on Court 1. As the video clip below shows, when it came to aesthetic appeal and quality of play, this one was hard to top. By the time it was over, Gasquet and Wawrinka had combined to hit 119 winners and cover 7,615 meters of grass. In the words of The Guardian the next day, “the play from both verged on the outrageous.”

Here's a look back at few of their outrages.

—As the match began, it seemed clear to everyone that Wawrinka was going to win. The No. 4 seed was coming off a blazing run to the French Open title three weeks earlier, and he had largely kept up his torrid play at Wimbledon, where he hadn’t dropped a set in his first four matches. Earlier that day, the other three men who had been seeded to reach the semis, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, and Roger Federer, had all advanced easily. When he went up two sets to one on Gasquet, Stan’s name was practically penciled into the fourth spot, across from Djokovic’s. From the day the Wimbledon draw had been made, the tennis world had been waiting to see the rematch of their Roland Garros final.

—On the first point in this clip, Wawrinka shows, with a swipe of his forehand, why everyone believed he would advance: He hits a bigger ball than Gasquet. Stan’s swings from both sides are a little flatter, a little less flicky and elaborate, than Gasquet’s. Each man has a justifiably famous one-handed backhand, but Wawrinka’s comes through the court with more reliable heaviness. Gasquet can also put the ball past anyone with his, of course, but not as consistently as Wawrinka.

Still, as far as visual appeal goes, I’ll take Gasquet’s backhand over everyone else’s, ever, with the possible exception of Justine Henin’s.

—Nevertheless, Gasquet wins the first set 6-4. He seems to recognize early that on this surface, with Wawrinka in a groove, he isn't going to be able to trade ground strokes and survive for long. So the baseliner came to the net, winning 35 of 56 points there, and serving and volleying his way out of trouble on a number of occasions.

When he double-faults to give away the second set, though, it looks like Gasquet is again doomed to failure. Coming in, he had lost 15 of his previous 16 matches to Top 10 opponents, and his last meeting with Wawrinka, at the French Open in 2013, had also ended in heartbreak: After winning the first two sets in front of a roaring home audience, he had lost the last three to the silent horror of that same crowd.

—Wawrinka, meanwhile, is doing what he had been doing for the previous month: Crushing the ball. He would hit 22 aces and 73 winners on the day, and his strings make that same metallic thwacking sound they had made against Djokovic in Paris. It’s a sound that says, “This point is over.”

At Wimbledon, there was a lot of talk about whether Wawrinka should replace Nadal, who was swept off the court in the second round by Dustin Brown, in the ATP’s Big 4. Just when his promotion looked like a done deal, though, Stan showed us why he has never been a member of that elite group in the past. Up two sets to one, he surrendered the initiative to Gasquet, and matched the Frenchman’s earlier blunder by double-faulting to hand over the fourth set—it was Wawrinka’s only double of the day.

I guess the lesson of this match is that you never know who will surprise you, and you never know will revert to form.

—Six of this clip’s 14 minutes are given over to the fifth set, and it’s easy to see why. Like our No. 5 match, Fabio Fognini’s win over Rafael Nadal at the U.S. Open, the drama in Gasquet-Wawrinka is saved for the final act. Here the winners come fast and furious, from the net, the backcourt, and from outside the sidelines—watch for a rally where the two see who can carve a more acute angle with his backhand.

Gasquet, throwing caution to the wind as the sun goes down, manages to match Wawrinka’s pace. For the first eight games, it's Gasquet who is seeing the ball well, who is reading his opponent’s serve, who is doing the shotmaking from the backhand side. Gasquet, the game’s Microwave, has gone nuclear. When he pokes a running forehand up the line and past Wawrinka to break, this fifth set begins to resemble another that he had won, over Andy Roddick, at Wimbledon eight years earlier.

—Then Gasquet gives it right back. Serving for the match at 5-3, his beautiful backhand turns ugly. Wawrinka holds for 5-5 and goes up 0-30 on Gasquet’s serve. Surely this is the end. Surely, Gasquet, the child prodigy who has lost innumerable close matches as an adult, is finished. Instead, he digs in and finds a way to hold.

“I had to fight, fight, to keep my serve,” said Gasquet, who was driven by the fear of another brutal defeat. “It would have been tough for me to lose after being ahead 5-3.”

From there, the match picks up speed as the two men barrel from 5-5 to 6-6 to 7-7 to 8-8 and beyond. Gasquet continues to construct points aggressively, while Wawrinka continues to serve brilliantly. The light fades over Court 1, but the winners keep flying.

—Finally, it's Wawrinka who blinks in that fading light. His confidence may have been high, but his full-throttle shots will always be risky, and at 9-10 he misses three in a row to go down 0-40, triple match point. On the next point, a Gasquet forehand clips the top of the tape and falls backward; at 15-40, a Wawrinka forehand does the same thing and goes over the net.

Gasquet has one match point left. When Wawrinka drills a first serve near the center line, it looks as if another chance for the tragic Richard G. has come and gone. This time, though, he reaches out and stabs a forehand return back into the corner, and watches as a Wawrinka backhand sails long.

At long last, luck was on the Frenchman's side. Luck and something else: Gasquet, who has always won with talent, won with grit instead. It may not have lasted long—he would lose to Djokovic in the semis in straight sets—but he earned this feel-good moment.