Sport360° view: Wawrinka’s early exit shows life at the top is tough

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  • Waving goodbye to his French Open hopes: Stan Wawrinka.

    The sight of Stan Wawrinka on Monday night after his shock loss to Guillermo Garcia- Lopez was a picture of a lost man.

    He was trying to put on a brave face, answering questions with grace and patience, but it was clear the defeat was as big as a surprise to him as it was to everyone else.

    Since the Swiss won his first Grand Slam at the Australian Open last January, he’s been streaky. He lost in the last 16 in Indian Wells and Miami, lost a tough Davis Cup match to Andrey Golubev in Switzerland, bounced back by winning Monte Carlo in tremendous fashion, but then crashed out early in both Madrid and Rome.

    They were all signs of a player struggling to keep up with his status as world No3 and a major champion. But the real test was always going to be Paris. A place where he made the quarters last year and where he can prove his mettle in best-of-five matches against strong opponents.

    And make no mistake, Garcia Lopez is a strong opponent. But not one who would render Wawrinka as powerless as he was in the third and fourth sets, where he mustered only two games.

    He was later unable to explain his lack of solutions on court and gave a philosophical answer at first saying: “Sometimes you need to have some tough one to see exactly where you want to go and how you’re going to do it.”

    But he went on to say how he needed to collect all the pieces of the “puzzle” and figure out how he can handle himself as a a top-ranked player.

    It is a situation we have grown accustomed to on the women’s tour but not necessarily on the men’s. When Roger Federer won his first major in Wimbledon 2003, he then made the fourth round in the US Open and then won another slam in Australia a few months later.

    Rafael Nadal won Roland Garros in 2005 as a 19-year-old then crashed out of the second round in Wimbledon, but he wasn’t that comfortable on grass and it wasn’t much of a shock. A third round then a title victory followed in his subsequent two majors.

    Novak Djokovic’s Grand Slam breakthrough path looks like this: semi-final, semi-final, final, win, semi-final.

    Andy Murray followed his US Open maiden triumph with a final then another title win. But Wawrinka is different to those players.

    He played for so many years at a significantly lower level than them and in total, he owns just seven titles – three of which he won only this season.

    Ana Ivanovic, whose sole slam came in Paris in 2008, said she can relate to Wawrinka’s situation saying the attention that suddenly comes after breaking through is not easy to deal with, nor is the pressure of expectation.

    For Wawrinka, it’s one thing to get closer and closer to beating the top guys and finally doing it and it’s another animal being just as dominant against the lower-ranked guys in every single event.

    That’s what the ‘Big Four’ have been exceptional at and that’s what Wawrinka is now trying to figure out. The important thing for him is not to treat this as a disaster.

    He has Magnus Norman in his corner who can help give him perspective and this Roland Garros lesson will definitely help him prepare better for the upcoming slams.

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