Alberto Berasategui Salazar

Born: June 28, 1973 in Bilbao (País Vasco)
Height: 1.72 m
Plays: Right-handed

…if Jean Borotra (1898–1994), one of the famed French ‘Four Musketeers’ of the interwar period, stands as the greatest Basque player in history, Berasategui at least deserves the title of ‘best Basque player’ of the Open Era.
The 1994 it was his year to some degree (merely Pete Sampras won more titles that year; btw Sampras is the only top player born in the 70s, Berasategui never faced), he brought back something that had been seen in 1988 when Kent Carlsson advanced to the Top 10 while focusing only on clay. Both Berasategui and Carlsson played with enormous topspin forehands, but in Berasategui’s case, there was something unseen before: he hit the ball aggressively off both wings with the same grip!
Nothing strange about that for players of many previous generations, who grew up with wooden racquets and adjusted to the continental grip. But to play this way with modern graphite equipment – hitting every shot with the same side of the racquet – it was a bizarrely tough task. Berasategui somehow found a way; with such an extreme forehand grip, and exceptionally fast pace between points on serve, his topspin was really impressive. In the mid-90s, heavy topspin wasn’t as popular as it would become in the next decade. The Basque took full advantage of it on clay, moving smoothly with his wiggly legs to  produce forehand winners all over the place.
First he gained some attention in the fall of 1993 by reaching four small ATP finals (lost three of them, always in deciders). He sent a serious message to the top players in Nice ’94, defeating Jim Courier 6-4, 6-2 in the final – Courier, at the time, had played three consecutive French Open finals. Berasategui’s great form in southern France carried over to Paris: at Roland Garros ’94, he was brilliant for two weeks. Before that event, he’d never even reached a Slam third round, yet suddenly he was in the final, eliminating only quality opponents: Wayne Ferreira, Cédric Pioline, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Javier Frana (b. 1966, three titles), Goran Ivanišević, and Magnus Larsson. Even though none of his opponents (five of six potential Top 10 players, excluding Frana) were typical clay-courters, the fact that Berasategui didn’t drop a set was really astonishing.
In the final, he faced a Davis Cup mate and defending champion – Sergi Bruguera. In the first all-Spanish major final, witnessed by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I, the Basque was defeated in four sets by the Catalan, who neutralized Berasategui’s kick-serve and simply outlasted him. The Parisian fortnight boosted Berasategui’s confidence – afterwards, he won six titles in the second half of the season (seven including a Challenger), the biggest in Stuttgart. He went unbeaten on clay for 27 straight matches (22 excluding a Challenger title in Barcelona), earning a spot at the Masters. There, he became a whipping boy; unlike Carlsson in 1988, Berasategui switched from clay to carpet, where Michael Chang, Andre Agassi, and Bruguera destroyed him. The latter felt so confident that I saw him serve-and-volleying regularly for the first time.
Berasategui was never the same after 1994. Opponents figured him out – his tendency to serve almost exclusively to right-handed backhands on the deuce court (standing unusually close to the center mark – in the mid 90s only Gilbert Schaller had higher % of first serves in) and his habit of running around his backhand for those vicious topspin forehands. Covering ~75% of the baseline with the forehand is never easy – it requires endless running and power – it’s even harder for a player of his modest stature. Once his fitness dipped, his exposed backhand became prone to errors.
Strangely, his second-best major performance came on hard courts – the 1998 Australian Open, where he reached the quarterfinals beating Andrei Medvedev, Patrick Rafter, and Agassi as an underdog, in succession. Yet between June 2nd and August 31st that year, he lost nine straight main-level matches! Before that skid, he suffered two brutal collapses: leading 5:1 in the deciders against Pioline (Monte Carlo) and Félix Mantilla (Hamburg); he wasted eleven match points combined. Berasategui retired at age of 27, with a 14-9 record in ATP finals – all on clay (Carlsson, with a distinctively shorter career, finished at 9-8). He played one semifinal outside clay (Scottsdale ’96), Carlsson did not.

Career record: 278–199 [ 207 events ]
Career titles: 14
Highest ranking: No. 7
Best GS results:
Australian Open (quarterfinal 1998)
Roland Garros (runner-up 1994)