Regardless of the results that he records at this week’s season-ending World Tour Finals, Frenchman Richard Gasquet has enjoyed a strong year in the top 10 as he looks to bridge the gap from former prodigy to major contender. After one of his most successful years on the circuit with three singles titles and a 50-20 win/loss record, one feels that Richard Gasquet’s major performances this year are just the start of what will be a fruitful next 18 months for the Frenchman. There is, however, technical work to do for Gasquet’s team if he is to make the next step up from dark horse to a true member of the elite.

While winning Doha, Montpellier and Moscow, the 27-year-old Frenchman also advanced deep into three of the four majors with his only setback being a third-round loss to Bernard Tomic at Wimbledon this year. Since that loss, however, Gasquet has begun to trouble the world’s top five with his highlight of the year being a win over fourth seed David Ferrer in the quarterfinals at this year’s US Open.

The Frenchman’s run has been greatly assisted by his dual coaching team of former top-10 player Sebastian Grosjean and Italian Riccardo Piatti. The affable Grosjean has helped to add solidarity to Gasquet’s game, while Piatti, who is Novak Djokovic’s former mentor, has looked to shore up Gasquet’s mental resilience as he seeks to contend for majors.

Neverthless, Gasquet still has quite a way to come if he is going to become an all-court player capable of threatening on all surfaces. His serve has often become his Achilles heel, and it can tend to let him down at pressure points. Coming up against some of the greatest returners of all time, such as world No. 2 Novak Djokovic and world No. 4 Andy Murray, Gasquet is afforded little room for error in his second serve. Here, he will benefit greatly from having the ‘ever-consistent’ 35-year-old Grosjean in his corner as he looks for more consistency and more potency out of his serve.

There is another technical part of Gasquet’s game that has and will continue to trouble him unless he is equipped with the tools to cope with it and that is the high bouncing ball to the backhand. He can take solace in the fact that even the great Roger Federer has struggled with this during his career, but it is one drawback of possessing a single-handed backhand despite its greater versatility than the two-handed backhand.

At the moment, Gasquet possesses one of the finest backhands on the men’s tour, but players have learned the weaknesses of the single-handed backhand, even when executed at its best. Players who have grown up on slower surfaces like clay, such as Rafael Nadal, David Ferrer and Juan Martin Del Potro, know that it is much more difficult for a single-handed backhander to come over the ball in their action than it is for a double-handed backhander. These types of players who play with a high amount of topspin in their groundstrokes have earned greater success against the single-handed backhand and thus have demanded more variation from the single-backhander. With all three of those all-court players in the top six at the moment, these are all players that Gasquet will have to solve to maximize his potential.

With a more than capable team to help refine Gasquet’s game, the Frenchman is perfectly placed for an assault on the world’s top five in January at the Australian Open. After a better-than-average 2013, he hopes to demand a lot more attention from the tennis world heading into 2014. And the solid team overseeing him should complement his flamboyant playing style in a way that heightens his chances to break through.