Stan Wawrinka’s latest feat: the on-and-off tennis champion

Consider being born in Switzerland in the 1980s, playing tennis, playing tennis well, with a one-handed backhand, and not being Roger Federer. Consider that fate has decreed you should live in a marvellous yet ruthless era, an obsessive era unlike any other, which has imposed new minimum requirements for being considered a champion: double-digit Grand Slam titles, and twice as many. Imagine being Stanislaw Wawrinka, with a look that’s always a little nostalgic, a nickname – ‘Stan the Man’ – that suits him more or less, and a tattoo featuring a quote from Beckett that has nothing to do with your time. Fail again, fail better: a counter-manifesto in the era of the Big 3.

From today, Wawrinka’s career has a start date and an end date; what came before is now prefixed with ‘former’. At forty-one, he had one last wish: to finish in the top 100. He did not succeed. His final shot was a backhand down the line – that backhand down the line, or at least what remained of it – hurled down the court. Out. Game over after a 24-year career, 590 wins, 16 titles, 3 Grand Slams – all three won against the world number ones at the time. Paris, New York, Melbourne. He defeated them all, and all in the final: Federer, Nadal, Djokovic. Consistent yet often slightly out of his depth, he appeared dressed as someone who had not anticipated needing to pose for a celebratory photoshoot. An underdog by nature, as a child he had dreamed of playing at Roland Garros, not of winning it. It was enough for him simply to hope to see his name on the tournament’s main draw board – that was all. The very idea of becoming a champion was a sin of hubris. When he was a child, his parents ran a centre providing support for people with mental health issues. Tennis was a luxury, a privilege for which to be grateful; it could never amount to much more than that; defeats had to remain defeats, never tragedies.

Stan Wawrinka won the Davis Cup and an Olympic gold medal in doubles; he won the Monte Carlo tournament but was unable to celebrate because he had beaten Roger Federer. He could have harboured a legitimate grudge. Yet he has never been a resentful man. Two years ago, the man who had been a Grand Slam champion played in a Challenger tournament in Naples – the lowest tier of professional tennis. A return to his roots. Yes, but it can be painful to find yourself, as an older man, back in the little room of your childhood dreams. The Swiss player responded to the speculation as follows: “Tennis is tennis wherever you play it. On the Philippe Chatrier court and on this court by the seafront. I arrived at the Club first and there were four gentlemen playing a doubles match. That’s tennis too, isn’t it?”

Finishing in the top three was always enough for him: winning every now and then, being an intermittent champion, not making a big deal of it, not emulating the ‘cannibals’. It wasn’t laziness or a lack of dedication, but rather a certain way of carrying himself on court, keeping a low profile. Yet when he was on the back foot, he was hard to beat – just ask Novak Djokovic. ‘Stanimal’ – yes, but only reluctantly. They nicknamed him the ‘Giant-Killer’ and he truly was one. And it is peculiar that someone born in the wrong country and in the wrong decade should one day – or perhaps two, or three – find himself in the right place at the right time with the right courage. The kind that enables one to hit, against all the odds, one of the most beautiful backhand winners down the line that tennis has ever seen. Thank you, Stan.