PARIS – When tennis is a dream, your whole life lies ahead of you. When that dream came true and came to an end, there is a whole life to look back on. Swiss player Stanislas Wawrinka knows this all too well, having bid a final farewell to Roland Garros on Monday with a lump in his throat and plenty of smiles.
“It was thanks to Roland Garros that I wanted to become a tennis player,” said the 41-year-old Swiss, who bid farewell to the French Open after playing in it 21 times.
As a child and teenager, “the only thing on my mind” during the last week of May was getting home from school and watching Roland Garros until whatever time it was.
That boy grew up and joined the ATP Tour, where Roger Federer was already shining. Some might think that the eight-time Wimbledon champion overshadowed his compatriot, but the truth is that Wawrinka shone on the tour with an intensity surpassed by only three other players: Federer, Rafael Nadal (22 Grand Slam titles) and Novak Djokovic (24).
Only Wawrinka and Britain’s Andy Murray managed to win three Grand Slam tournaments during the two decades of the ‘Big Three’s’ dominance, and the Swiss player also knows what it is like to be a Davis Cup champion and an Olympic gold medallist.
There is, of course, an intangible quality, a virtue of Wawrinka’s that cannot be measured in numbers or statistics, but in beauty: his one-handed backhand. And in that respect, he could well be considered the number one of this era, surpassing backhands of great beauty such as those of Federer, Gastón Gaudio, Grigor Dimitrov or Richard Gasquet.
There is another aspect that cannot be measured by statistics and with which Wawrinka left his mark on the circuit: his famous checked shorts, which sparked passion in some and horror in others.
His farewell to Paris came on an afternoon of scorching heat and on one of tennis’s most beautiful stages, the Simone Mathieu court, nestled in the middle of a greenhouse, surrounded by greenery. Djokovic, Nadal and Federer appeared on the stadium’s giant screen to express their admiration for him, and so it was that Wawrinka arrived at his press conference with reddened eyes and a lump in his throat.
Champion of the 2014 Australian Open, defeating Nadal in the final; of Roland Garros 2015, beating Djokovic; and of the 2016 US Open, defeating Djokovic once again, Wawrinka made his mark at a time when standing out was almost impossible, such was the overwhelming dominance of the Big Three.
‘For more than 20 years I have experienced these emotions; you never want them to end,’ he admitted on Monday in Paris. ‘I have given my all for this sport.’
