With his win over Novak Djokovic, Stan Wawrinka makes the world go "Whoaaaaa!"
Sports events inspire different reactions among different people. Some viewers jump up and down in excitement, some others close their eyes out of fear, some curse and abuse like there’s no tomorrow, and some maintain a poker face that betrays no emotions, even if their insides are doing somersaults. This is one of the many things that make sport such a compelling cause; the whole breadth of human emotion can be traversed in the span of a single match, and we’re all the richer for it.
Today’s French Open final between Stan Wawrinka and Novak Djokovic, however, wasn’t your regular sporting event. There was no diversity in the reactions that it inspired; you couldn’t even separate the fans of the two players if you looked at their faces while watching the match. As Wawrinka pummeled winner after winner, gorgeous backhand after gorgeous backhand, there was an almost severe uniformity in the way people of all shapes and sizes reacted.
They all basically let out a long and stunned ‘Whoaaaaa!’
Very few times, if ever, has a player put up such a spectacular shot-making show in a Grand Slam final as Wawrinka did today. He didn’t just defeat Djokovic; he crafted a barrage of exquisite ammunition that blasted right through the World No. 1, as it would have any other player in the world. By the end, Djokovic was gasping for breath, and the rest of the world was gasping too – but out of awe, rather than exhaustion.
This isn’t the first time that Wawrinka has stretched Djokovic to the limit, of course. The two have contested a healthy share of titanic battles (that were also shot-making exhibitions) in the last two years, the most recent coming at the previous Major itself. Djokovic won that match in five sets, marking the third consecutive year that their Australian Open match had gone the full distance. The two also went five sets at the 2013 US Open, where the Serb again triumphed in a high-quality tussle.
How Djokovic would have wished that today’s match had gone five sets too. Surely it would not have been possible for Wawrinka to maintain that stunning a level of play for another whole set? Surely he would’ve started missing his laser backhands and blistering forehands? Surely he would have rolled over and quit?
Unfortunately for the World No. 1, he will never find out. Four sets was all it took Stan the Man to get the job done this time; four sets of the purest ball-striking you’ll ever get to see. Even in the set that he lost, 6-4 in the first, he managed to produce a good amount of highlight reel shots. In that set, Wawrinka smacked 12 winners to Djokovic’s seven; there was no doubting on whose racquet the match rested today, right from the outset.
What’s interesting, however, is how little we expected the script to unfold this way. We knew what Wawrinka was capable of, having seen him lift his first Major just a year ago, and his straight-sets demolition of Roger Federer in the quarters should have set the alarm bells ringing. But somehow, all that was forgotten as the two men lined up for the coin toss today, and much of that had to do with the kind of animal that Djokovic has turned into.
Up to the final, he looked – there’s no way to euphemise this – invincible. So invincible, in fact, that even Rafael Nadal couldn’t come close to stopping his seemingly-inevitable march to Career Slam glory.
That march first took hold all the way back in 2012, when he entered the French Open while holding all the other three Majors. But the famous stubbornness of the King of Clay, combined with an untimely dash of rain, poured water over the Serb’s aspirations.
2013 looked even more positive, with Djokovic going a break up in the fifth set of the semifinal against the Spaniard. But fate intervened again; the Serb infamously touched the net to lose a point at a crucial juncture, ultimately losing the match too.
We thought 2014 would be different, and it almost was. In that edition Djokovic started his match against Nadal brightly, winning the first set (unlike the previous two years) and looking fully in control of the rallies. But Nadal regrouped like only he can, and Djokovic’s woes were compounded when a stomach problem surfaced out of nowhere, making him throw up on the court. A double fault on match point (exactly like 2012) put paid to the Career Slam dream once more, as he lost yet another French Open heartbreaker to Nadal.
This year, it was Djokovic who was the one breaking hearts. A straight sets dismissal of Nadal in the quarters ended the Spaniard’s insane winning streak at Roland Garros, and spawned a million eulogies to the King of Clay Who Had Been Dethroned, if only for a year. This year was clearly THE year.
Everything was in place. Motivation? Check. Opportunity? Check. Game? Double check. Then how on earth could today have happend?
That’s the thing with genius, and Wawrinka’s baseline game is nothing if not genius. His backhand is a piece of art, and when it’s on, there’s nothing anyone can do to counter it. And when he gets his sometimes-ferocious forehand working just as well as his backhand, Wawrinka turns into a bona fide monster. Federer found that out a few days ago, and today it was Djokovic’s turn.
Wawrinka hit 60 winners in just four sets, against one of the best defenders in history, and on one of the slowest surfaces in the world. That’s brutal, dazzling, otherwordly brilliance, and we are unlikely to ever see anything like it again.
But it wasn’t all spectacular offense and scintillating winners. Wawrinka showed tremendous fight too, saving eight of the ten break points he faced, and coming up with clutch serves when he needed them most. He didn’t seem fazed by the occasion or the opponent, and from the way he handled the pressure situations in the match, you’d be forgiven for thinking that destroying the hopes of World No. 1 players was a habit of his.
And maybe he will make it a habit too. Wawrinka may be on the wrong side of 30, but he has clearly been playing the best tennis of his career the last three seasons, reaching two semifinals and two finals at the Slams. More significantly, however, he knows how to beat the big dogs – he defeated the World No. 1 and World No. 2 in his first Slam title run, and he’s done the exact same thing to win his second. Has there ever been a more awe-inspiring late bloomer in tennis?
Li Na would probably have something to say about that, but there’s no denying that Wawrinka, with his two unexpected Slam triumphs, has turned himself into a phenomenon. Not a phenomenon in the Federer/Nadal/Djokovic mould; he’s not a winning machine, and is likely never going to be. But what Wawrinka brings to the table is something that is at once more relatable and more unfathomable – he has his inconsistencies and inner struggles like all of us, but he’s also capable of producing tennis that seems humanly impossible.
Wawrinka is an everyday man and an untouchable virtuoso, both rolled into one. It’s no wonder we can only go ‘Whoaaaaa!’ when he turns it on.