JOIN USSetting his own mark
After being raised on a Swiss farm, Stanislas Wawrinka took quite some time to feel as though he belonged in the grandest cities and grandest matches.
“The first years when I came to New York, everything was too big and too much,” he said. “For me it was too difficult here, but bit by bit, it became one of my favourite places.”
The love affair has only deepened after last Sunday’s four-set victory over Novak Djokovic in the US Open final. The Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd, amplified by the new roof overhead, was audibly in his corner as he closed out a duel that was much more brutal than the final-set score of 6-3 would indicate.
“I got the chills before serving for the match,” he said. “So much noise. So many people. I remember three years ago when I played Novak here, I lost in five sets and I got a standing ovation, and I got chills then, too.”
Even at age 31, Wawrinka still has an air of the ingénue about him, with his voice that still cracks and his openness about his vulnerabilities. In interviews, particularly in his native French, he lets you in — sharing his hopes and fears (and tears).
How many star athletes would have volunteered that they cried because of the stress they were under just five minutes before walking on the court for the final?
Not many. But one of the keys to his success is how little of his own internal struggle and fatigue he had allowed to filter through once he made it out on court.
Wawrinka certainly has a volatile side. He has berated himself plenty in public and broken many a racquet. At the 2014 ATP World Tour Finals in London, he even lost his cool mid-match after being heckled by Mirka Federer, the wife of his friend and opponent Roger Federer.
But down the stretch in New York this year, he was comparatively self-contained. Yes, he bellowed after big points, but in general, he channeled his energy into the essential: pointing repeatedly to his temple as he took out three very dangerous opponents in a row by chasing down tennis balls and then pummeling them, although crucially not always pummeling them.
It was quite a week’s work from a man who had not beaten a top-10 player this year before the US Open.
In the quarterfinals, he stopped the Olympic silver medalist Juan Martín del Potro, who had upset him at Wimbledon in July. In the semifinals, Wawrinka held off the Olympic bronze medalist Kei Nishkori, who had beaten him at the Rogers Cup in Toronto last month. Then came the highest hurdle: Djokovic, the world’s longstanding No. 1 player, who had beaten him in four of their last five matches and 19 of 23 over all.
But Wawrinka, unlike nearly every other tennis player on the planet, knew he could deal with prime Djokovic after having come back to beat him in the 2014 Australian Open quarterfinals and the 2015 French Open final.
“I was focusing and trying not to show anything,” Wawrinka said Monday in an interview with reporters atop Rockefeller Center, with Manhattan laid out below him in the sunshine. “Yesterday (Septmber 4), I knew it was really important because we all know how good Novak is and how he can take from a little thing you give him, he will bite it and he will take it.”
Wawrinka wanted to give Djokovic as little cause for optimism as possible, and as the final played out, it was Djokovic who broke down after a fast start. He was the one hollering at his entourage, rolling his eyes, spreading his arms in frustration or smiling sardonically. He was the one, after all the grueling corner-to-corner rallies, who ended up with bloody blisters on his toes and grabbing at his legs as if he were about to cramp.
And he was the one — whether or not there was gamesmanship in the mix — who felt compelled to take two injury timeouts for those blisters in the final set.
“I think I’m one of the few who managed to make him crack physically in a Grand Slam, and that for me is something enormous,” Wawrinka said.
It has been a surprising second half to the tennis season. After Djokovic won his first French Open in June, he held all four major singles titles. Who would have predicted then that he would fail to win Wimbledon, an Olympic medal or the US Open?
For Djokovic, there have been unspecified personal problems, an injured left wrist and on-court volatility, which was already simmering during the clay-court season and at Roland Garros. All this surely contributed to Wawrinka’s sense, despite his stage fright in the locker room, that he could take down Djokovic.
“I had a feeling that this time, I have even more confidence to beat him,” Wawrinka said. “I feel better than him, and it is the first time ever I had that feeling in a tournament and in a match.”
A new tattoo seems long overdue. The Samuel Beckett phrase on his left forearm — “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better” — no longer seems the best summation of his career path.
And yet he remains reluctant to surrender his outsider’s role, which is working quite well. He is lightning-quick to argue against expanding the Big Four — Djokovic, Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray — to the Big Five to make room for him, pointing out his own inconsistency.
Still, in the last three years, he has won three major singles titles, which ties him with Murray for fourth place in this rightly named Golden Age behind Federer’s 17, Nadal’s 14 and Djokovic’s 12.
Federer, by the way, owes his friend and compatriot Wawrinka a thank-you note for keeping Djokovic from closing the historical gap. But Wawrinka is in quite a club of his own as the first man since Jaroslav Drobny in the 1950s to win three majors after starting his run so late: at age 28 in Wawrinka’s case.
That age seems all the rage. In the women’s game, Angelique Kerber has won her first two major singles titles this year at 28, including this year’s US Open.
Boundaries, mental and physical, are expanding. Like a diesel engine, Wawrinka takes time to warm up, but once he does, he has plenty of staying power. He talked Monday about how much he needed to get into long, draining rallies early on against Djokovic so that the pain in his legs would help him forget about the pressure.
The groundwork was laid in his physical training with Pierre Paganini, the Swiss fitness coach who also has been central to Federer’s longevity. “You go to the edge of your limits,” Wawrinka said. “And then suddenly you go from being exhausted to, in a flash, being practically happy to suffer. You feel good despite the fact that you want to die.”
Now, a player whose early career goals were, at most, modest lacks only one Grand Slam singles title: Wimbledon.
Marian Vajda, one of Djokovic’s coaches, said he did not know how confident Wawrinka would be on grass. “He’s kind of a mysterious guy,” Vajda said. “He always doesn’t believe, and he gets it when he doesn’t believe.”
Wawrinka has yet to get past the quarterfinals at the All England Club, but there is no mystery at this stage. Write him off at your peril, particularly if he faces a certain Serbian for the title.