Whether it be the cool precision of Roger Federer, the swashbuckling style of Rafael Nadal or the heart-on-sleeve approach favoured by Andy Murray, top-level tennis is not doing too badly for characters these days.

Where the crucial issue of personality is concerned, the top men have stood up to be counted after too many years where many sports fans might have struggled to name the bunch battling it out in the mighty Swiss one's shadow.

Throughout those dark days, however, there were always chinks of light, and most were provided by the ever-entertaining Marat Safin, who was making his farewell stop at the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris this week.

Just as Goran Ivanisevic's departure robbed the game of a true individual, so Safin's retirement will not only be mourned by young ladies but by all those who love their tennis players to be audaciously talented and ebullient in equal measure.

Throughout a career which took him to the world number one spot and two Grand Slam titles but never, like Ivanisevic before him, led him quite to the level he was capable of, Safin was a headline act.

There was the inspired, almost unbeatable Safin, evident at the 2000 US Open when he swatted Pete Sampras in straight sets to claim his first major title in a style which suggested there were many more to come.

And in the 2005 Australian Open when, injuries having hampered his early promise, he hit back, saving match points to beat Federer in the semi-final before overcoming home boy Lleyton Hewitt to belatedly win his second Slam.

There was the moody, surly, inconsistent Safin who often seemed to find the demons inside his head a more challenging opponent than whoever was facing him on the other side of the net.

After his early Wimbledon exit to compatriot Dmitry Tursunov in 2004, Safin shrugged: "I don't like to play on this surface. After a while, I get bored. I completely lost motivation, and I gave up.

"I give up on Wimbledon. It is definitely not the tournament for me. I hate this, I have to admit it. I don't think I will be coming back here again. I love tennis, but I just don't like grass."

And having said that, there was the Safin who slouched into Wimbledon in 2008 with his ranking plummeting and presumably little hope of reversing that trend, who sailed all the way through to the semi-finals.

There was the Safin who said, after a match in Canada in 2004 when he was asked about his inner demons, responded by going off at a lengthy tangent about hippos, zebras and monkeys.

The Safin who celebrated winning a nifty point in a French Open marathon against Felix Mantilla by dropping his shorts, and then railed against tournament officials who penalised him a point.

"All of the people who run the sport, they have no clue," said Safin. "It is a pity that tennis is really going down the drain. Every year it's getting worse and worse. There has to be radical change, and I hope it will happen soon."

One senses even the officials Safin always claimed to so despise will be a little sad to see the back of the big Russian. Certainly, he is the kind of character the modern sport can ill afford to do without.