Stan Wawrinka

“Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”—Stan’s tattoo

Stan Wawrinka—goofy guy, terrible dresser, late bloomer, and in the shadow of Roger Federer for many years, is now out of Federer’s shadow (maybe), and a tennis giant himself (although, in his usual self-deprecating way, he denies greatness).

Wawrinka grew up on a farm, but not an ordinary farm. The eighty-acre Centre Social et Curatif in St.-Barthélemy, Switzerland, owned by a charitable foundation run for decades by his mother and father, shelters about fifty adults with mental disabilities. Wawrinka told a Swiss newspaper, “I had a very happy childhood. I was lucky to grow up surrounded by nature and animals, to be outside all the time and to work on a big farm with my dad. By growing up at a center for people with special needs, I learned to always fight hard to achieve what I want.”

Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic were winning big titles in their late teens and early twenties. Wawrinka, roughly their contemporary, looked up at them from far down in the rankings, only reaching the Top 10 in 2013 when he was twenty-eight (he was born in March 1985). Even then, although 2013 was generally a good year for him, things could be tough. At the 2013 Australian Open, Novak Djokovic beat him in a five-hour fourth-round match. The New York Times commented, “Despite his solid, powerful frame and abundance of shot-making talent, which includes one of the world’s best single-handed backhands, Wawrinka, 27, has long played in the deep shadow of tennis greatness. He is the second best Swiss player in the age of Federer. . . . And even on Sunday night, in the match of Wawrinka’s life, Federer still intruded in a fashion as watch commercials featuring Federer played and replayed on changeovers on the big-screen televisions inside the arena. Wawrinka even looked up from his chair and watched on occasion.” In 2017 he told a reporter who asked about Federer, “I have been asked about him for ten years, I can answer if you want but I am a little bit tired.”

Wawrinka is Federer’s close friend and practice partner. Here they are on the courts at Roland Garros 2015.

Wawrinka in the 2015 Roland Garros final. He beat Djokovic.

Wawrinka’s single-handed backhand is considered one of the best in modern tennis. This photograph was taken at Roland Garros 2015.

Some years ago Wawrinka got rid of his difficult first name, “Stanislas.” Now he likes to be known simply as “Stan.” A 2015 profile in the Atlantic magazine, written after he had won Roland Garros, described Stan this way: “From his bright pink ‘pajama’ shorts to his faintly dadboddish physique, the Swiss native looks more like someone you’d find at Home Depot than Roland Garros.” But then it went on to call his tennis “mind-blowingly beautiful.” In particular, his highly successful single-handed backhand, laden with topspin, is celebrated. Michael Steinberger of the New York Times described the single-handed backhand in general as “a singular display of agility, balance and precision timing” and “the last redoubt of artistry in tennis, a final vestige of the sport as it was traditionally played.” Wawrinka shares the shot with Federer (and others, including Richard Gasquet, Grigor Dimitrov, and Dominic Thiem), but arguably Wawrinka’s is the best.

Stan is no longer the underdog, although statistically he can never catch up with Federer, Nadal, or Djokovic. After the 2016 US Open, the Economist magazine called him the “great latecomer” and asked whether he was “a thwarted all-time great, or a mere supporting act.” Wawrinka is only a Wimbledon victory away from a career singles Grand Slam, something achieved so far by only seven male players (Fred Perry, Don Budge, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic). But despite winning the 2014 Australian Open, where he beat Nadal in the Finals; the 2015 French Open, where he beat Djokovic, denying him a career Grand Slam that year; the 2016 US Open, where he beat Djokovic, who deemed him “the more courageous player in the decisive moments;” the gold medal in doubles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics (Federer was his partner); and the 2014 Davis Cup doubles tournament, Wawrinka still seems to remain in the shadow of his friend and fellow Swiss, the sublime Roger Federer. In the 2017 Australian Open semifinal, in a very tough match, Federer beat Wawrinka in five sets (and then went on to beat Nadal in the final).

Some of the credit for Wawrinka’s emergence goes to his widely admired coach from 2013 to late 2017, Magnus Norman, former World No. 2 (in 2000), sometimes called “The Tennis Whisperer,” and often described as the world’s best tennis coach. Norman, who is known for working on mental attitude first and foremost, never won a Grand Slam himself; the furthest he got was the French Open final, where he lost to the Brazilian Gustavo Kuerten. Wawrinka told the New York Times: “Magnus is telling me to be more aggressive, try to push more with my forehand and the serve, but of course my game is still more or less the same. You can’t change your game at 28, it’s just trying to improve what you have. Sometimes I’m hesitating about things because I’m not feeling confident. That’s what I’m trying to change.” Wawrinka was shocked when (apparently for family reasons) Norman decided to quit in late 2017: “It was a big disappointment. A shock. In some of the worst moments of your career, you expect to be able to count on your dear ones.”

In 2015 Wawrinka surprised almost everyone by winning Roland Garros. In the finals he defeated Djokovic, the favorite.

After Wawrinka won the US Open, the TV interviewer Charlie Rose asked him, “Can you be number one?” Wawrinka laughed. “No,” he said. Then he added, with a shrug, “I’m not consistent enough. I don’t play well enough during the years. You play tennis week after week.” Many commentators have observed that although Wawrinka, whose tattoo on his inner left forearm features a well-known quotation from Samuel Beckett’s Worstward Ho (“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”), can rise to the occasion in big matches, his average level of performance is often mediocre. Wawrinka himself has said, “The Big Four, I’m really far from them.” Perhaps that explains the 2017 Roland Garros final when Nadal destroyed Wawrinka in straight sets. And then, shortly afterward, 2017 Wimbledon, the pity of it, Wawrinka lost in the first round to Daniil Medvedev, ranked No. 49. “Pathetic,” said one commentator. And then, at the beginning of August, Wawrinka called it quits for 2017. “I am sad to announce that after talking with my team and doctor I had to make a difficult decision to undergo a medical intervention on my knee.” As of the end of 2017, Wawrinka is ranked No. 9.

After beating Djokovic in the 2015 French Open (it is said that Wawrinka is the player Djokovic fears the most), Wawrinka told the Daily Telegraph that he had suffered a hangover of the soul. “Afterwards, you feel a little bit lonely, a bit of depression mentally. Because it’s so much stress and emotion, so many people around—and then it’s completely empty.” As John Jeremiah Sullivan wrote in his introduction to David Foster Wallace’s String Theory, tennis “draws the obsessive and the brooding. It is perhaps the most isolating of games.”

Magnus Norman is credited for much of Wawrinka’s success. This photograph was taken at Roland Garros 2015.

Struggling with consistency, Wawrinka sometimes plays at a level that is embarrassing even to himself—Rogers Cup 2016.