Monfils is retired, a few weeks before his Paris farewell

Twenty years. That is the distance between Gael Monfils' first tour title, Sopot in 2005, and his last, Auckland in 2025, won at 38. The International Tennis Integrity Agency now lists the Frenchman as retired from 5 October, Reuters reported on Wednesday, which ends his career before the send-off he had been expected to take at the Paris Masters in November.

He had announced in October 2025 that 2026 would be his final season. An ITIA spokesperson told Reuters that retirement takes him out of the sport's anti-doping programme and means he can no longer enter tournaments. That makes the US Open his last event. In the first round he came back from a set down to beat Adolfo Daniel Vallejo 2-6 6-1 6-2 6-0, the last of his wins; in the second he lost 6-3 6-4 6-3 to Learner Tien, who had also beaten him in Montreal in August. His final season reads 5 wins and 10 defeats, and the ranking list of 5 October has him at No. 254 with 220 points.

The peak came in 2016. He reached the US Open semifinal, lost there to Novak Djokovic 6-3 6-2 3-6 6-2, qualified for the ATP Finals and climbed to No. 6 on 7 November, the highest ranking of his career. His only other Grand Slam semifinal was Roland Garros in 2008, a 6-2 5-7 6-3 7-5 defeat to Roger Federer. He reached the Australian Open quarterfinals in 2016 and 2022, and his Grand Slam record ends at 131 wins and 70 defeats, 40 and 18 of those at Roland Garros across 19 appearances, 34 and 18 at the US Open across 18.

The 13 titles came from 35 tour-level finals, with three in Montpellier and two each in Rotterdam and Stockholm. The Masters finals never fell his way: Paris in 2009 and 2010, Monte Carlo in 2016, all lost. Neither did Djokovic. They played 20 times, from a five-set first round at the 2005 US Open to Brisbane in 2025, and Djokovic won all 20. Against Federer he finished 4-10, against Rafael Nadal 2-14.

News tale, 14 October 2026, sources: Reuters (ITIA), https://www.reuters.com/sports/tennis/itia-notified-former-world-number-six-monfils-retirement-2026-10-14/, Sackmann, api-tennis, ATP rankings