[Watch the Australian Open on Tennis Channel starting January 16, 2017]
Sure, he was talented, but he seemed too brittle, too overshadowed by his compatriot Roger Federer to ever punch through at a major. When Wawrinka surprised himself and the skeptics by capturing the Australian Open three years ago, everyone figured it was a one-and-done thing and that he’d never win another major. When he won the 2015 French Open, most of us assumed he’d been miraculously gifted a second pouch of fairy dust and that he would absolutely, positively never win a third slam. And then he won the US Open this past September. The moral of the story? It is a really bad idea to use the word “never” in the same sentence with the words “Stan Wawrinka.”
But even though the 31-year-old Wawrinka has won more majors in the last three years than Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Andy Murray combined and is just one title shy of a career slam, there remains an aura of improbability about him. Part of it is that he is so self-effacing. As was the case when he triumphed in Melbourne and in Paris, his victory celebration in New York was strikingly muted, as if he still regarded himself as an interloper, a party crasher. Wawrinka demurs whenever it is suggested that the so-called Big Four has now become the Fab Five. “The Big Four, I’m really far from them,” he said after his victory in Flushing, noting that they’ve shown a level of consistency that he has not. That’s the other factor here. Although Wawrinka is virtually a lock these days in title matches—he’s played in 12 tournament finals since 2014 and has won 11 of them—he still struggles with week-in, week-out focus. He reached the semifinals in Brisbane last week, and there’s every reason to think he’ll make a deep run at the Australian, which kicks off Monday. But beyond that, it is hard to say. With Wawrinka, you never quite know what you are going to get.
Is that a problem? It depends on how you want to look at it. If single-minded, sustained excellence is what you value in a player, then Stan the Man is not your man. But I happen to think that his recent success has been a godsend for tennis. As enthralling as the Big Four have been, they’d also rendered the men’s game numbingly predictable. You know the numbers; there’s no need to recite them here. In the last three years, Wawrinka has given men’s tennis a sorely needed element of chaos and surprise. You might think of him as the Clark Kent of tennis, the mild-mannered everyman who periodically slips into a phone booth (you remember those things) and comes out Superman, muscling his way to a major title. For all his ups and downs, Wawrinka has made men’s tennis vastly more interesting in recent years than it might otherwise have been.
