Gastón Gaudio

Gastón Norberto Gaudio (Spanish pronunciation: [ɡasˈton ˈɡauðjo]; born 9 December 1978) is a retired tennis player from Argentina. He won eight singles titles and achieved a career-high ATP singles ranking of world no. 5 in April 2005. Gaudio's most significant title win came at the 2004 French Open, where he defeated fellow Argentine Guillermo Coria in five sets in the final.

He learned the game at the Temperley Lawn Tennis Club, and his first coach was Roberto Carruthers. In addition to tennis Gaudio played football and rugby as a child and chose tennis to help out his parents financially when their business ran into economic problems.

Tennis career

Gaudio started playing tennis at the age of six and was ranked no. 145 in the Argentine juniors behind Mariano Zabaleta. He turned professional in 1996, and in 1998 he won two ATP Challenger events in Santa Cruz, Bolivia over Luis Adrián Morejón. He finished year by winning in Santiago defeating Karim Alami.

1999–2000

Gaudio won two consecutive Challengers in Nice and Espinho defeating Jacobo Díaz and Markus Hipfl, respectively. Gaudio's first notable performance was when he reached the third round at the French Open as a qualifier, so he won five matches total at the event, including coming back from two sets to love down in the second round against Bernd Karbacher to win, 6–7, 4–6, 6–3, 6–1, 6–4, then losing to world no. 6 Àlex Corretja.