It was a clear day in Roland Garros. Not too hot, definitely not cold, and a day made for playing tennis. It was a perfect day for history to be made.
From the founding of the sport until 1999, only five players had ever accomplished this incredible feat. There were greats of the game who never managed to nab them all. Pete Sampras, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, and Ken Rosewall all fell short, to name just a few. It is in accomplishment in sport that requires greatness, consistency, and a little bit of luck too. Sometimes, for example Connors being banned from the French Open for five of his best years, things just don’t work out to allow a champion to be crowned.
Andre Agassi was the fifth to earn this achievement, beating Andriy Medvedev in the 1999 French Open, ending a 35-year Grand Slam drought.
Since then, though, we saw two new all-time greats add their name to this illustrious list. There is no surprise that the pair could win all four tournaments. Still, even with these two nothing was a given. Nadal has not been great (relatively) on hard courts and only has one Australian Open title to his name. Nadal’s dominance at the French Open has kept Federer down to just one title in Paris. Even for two of the undisputed best players ever, little things could have kept them from being on this coveted list.
Novak Djokovic was aiming to become the eight male singles player in history to complete his collection of Grand Slam trophies and to join Federer and Nadal as the third in the last six years. He has been aiming for this since 2011, but Nadal always stood in his way. Now, having dispatched Nadal with relative ease in the quarterfinal, Djokovic only had Stan Wawrinka standing between him and further immortality.
The 30-year-old Wawrinka has been a bit of a late bloomer in terms of tennis greatness. He has always had one of the best backhands in the world, there is no question about that. He has been floating between the top 10-30 since 2008. His first career Slam semifinal didn’t come until the 2013 US Open, though. He reached a Masters final in Rome in 2008 but couldn’t duplicate that result until Madrid in 2013. Wawrinka always had the power and the backhand and could therefore win matches and even pull off upsets, but the consistency of a champion did not arrive until he hired coach Magnus Norman in April 2013.
The current generation of champions has spoiled us. We now expect our Slam champions to consistently reach semifinals and finals of big tournaments. Wawrinka has been a Slam champion for over a year, having won the 2014 Australian Open. But he has had his fair share of early exits in Slams and Masters since then, reaching only one semifinal in the five Slams prior to this French Open.
The surface in Melbourne best suits Wawrinka’s game, so it is not surprising that he has produced his best tennis there. But the clay of Roland Garros is not far behind, as Wawrinka is comfortable moving on the surface and has the raw power to hit the ball through the slower court. Wawrinka also, somewhat surprisingly, does not have trouble with his one-handed backhand here. The high bounce on clay has created awkward backhands from Roger Federer for years and has been one of the linchpins of his lopsided head-to-head against Rafael Nadal here. But Wawrinka has such control of his one-hander that he can absorb spin and pace with that backhand and send it right back at his opponent.
A poor service game in the first set cost Wawrinka the break and ultimately that set. Frustration was clearly setting in the second set as Wawrinka kept the pressure on Djokovic’s service games but was unable to break through. After Djokovic held for 4-4, Wawrinka pounded the net with his racket several times in frustration. He kept the pressure up, though, and broke Djokovic the next time to say the set 6-4. Now it was Djokovic getting frustrated as he responded to the loss of the set by destroying his racket.
Wawrinka entered his version of “beast mode” in the third set, blasting incredible winners that can’t even be described with words. (Seriously, check out this winner; it’s just unreal.) Djokovic was tense and his defense a little flatter than usual, not quite getting his normal penetrating depth on groundstrokes. Wawrinka was taking full advantage, earning the decisive break for 4-2 in the third set and serving it out.
Djokovic wasn’t going to go down without a fight, though, breaking Wawrinka early in the fourth set. The Swiss responded like a champion, though, still hitting powerful groundstroke after powerful groundstroke to earn the break back. No matter what Djokovic did on defense, Wawrinka just had another big winner to pull out of the bag. Wawrinka came into the match determined to make sure the match was decided on his racket. The World #9 did just that, picking up more than 30 combined winners and errors than Djokovic and staying at around double the Serbian’s winner count all match.
Wawrinka broke again for a 5-4 lead and the tennis world waited with bated breath to see if he could serve it out. In a matchup that needed five sets to determine their last four Grand Slam matches, it only took Wawrinka four to earn his biggest win in the series. “Stan the Man” or “The Stanimal”, as his fans refer to him, is back on top of the tennis world, where he was in January 2014. And with the way he played in this tournament, it’s likely that he will remain at the pinnacle a little longer than last time.
For Djokovic, it will be another year of waiting for the biggest milestone and another year for the pressure of the lack of a French Open title to weigh on him. Djokovic is too strong mentally to let this keep him down for too long; but you have to wonder if he will ever be able to overcome his nerves here.
Wawrinka will never quite be in the same category as Federer or Nadal or even Djokovic. He’s not going to win eight Slams. He will probably never reach World #1. But he is not a one-Slam wonder anymore. He only has ten career titles, but two of those are at the sport’s highest level. Djokovic came to Roland Garros searching for immortality. Stan Wawrinka came out of it eternal glory.
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