Stan Wawrinka has . . . swagger? We knew about the heavy snap backhand, and we’d heard more than enough of that incomprehensible wail of celebration that he emits when something good happens. But tonight the already bad little Swiss brother went one step further and got in Andy Roddick’s face. And it worked.
Not that Wawrinka really needed to intimidate anyone. We came into this tournament talking about the stellar form of good brother Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, and they’re still doing fine. But the guy who’s playing the stellar tennis now, who’s hitting the cover off the ball, is the No. 19 seed. Wawrinka backed up his convincing straight-setter over Gael Monfils with an even more impressive performance against Roddick.
With Roddick serving at 3-4 in the first set and both players at net, Wawrinka hit a reflex volley winner. He stood and did his wail in Roddick’s direction; Roddick went, roughly, pffft. It appeared that it had lit a spark, because Roddick came back and hit his hardest forehand of the match for a winner to save a break point. But really it had only sparked Stan. He hung in and eventually broke with a perfect down the line backhand pass. The air seemed to go out of Roddick.
Afterward, Andy said he couldn’t get much penetration with his shots because of the slow courts and conditions. He couldn’t push Wawrinka. But of course Wawrinka had no trouble pushing him. By the middle of the second set, after 16 games, Wawrinka had hit 11 winners on his backhand side; Roddick had three on both sides combined.
Wawrinka is moving better and serving bigger. He finished more than double Roddick’s ace count. The times when Roddick did come forward, the Swiss had all kinds of answers at his disposal. He sent a backhand down the line with so much pace that it landed four feet from the sideline, yet Roddick was still nowhere near it. Twice Wawrinka scrambled from the baseline to the net and popped a perfect lob straight up and over Roddick’s head. After one of them he raised his hand in the air with his index finger high. Roddick was no longer going pfft. The bad little brother had his respect.
I was most impressed with the composure Wawrinka showed after he broke early in the third. This was an upset, so you had to think he would get tight; Roddick must have been counting on it to a degree. But even while he had to fend off a couple of break points, the end never seemed in doubt. Wawrinka controlled the set the way the best players do, the big boys whom he suddenly appears ready to join. To become one of them, you have to be able to close. Stan closed tonight.
Roddick has been one of the sport’s best closers for many years. Where does he stand now? This makes five straight upset losses at the majors in the last year. I watched some of this match on Australia’s Channel 7, with Roddick’s future Davis Cup captain Jim Courier in the booth. Courier had an interesting thought. He believed that if there was a forehand speed gun on the court, Roddick, who likes to check his serve speed, would see his low number and subsequently start to flatten out and rip his forehand more. Courier thinks that Roddick “believes he’s being aggressive when he’s really being conservative,” and that a forehand gun would awaken him to that.
Whether that specific scenario is true, Courier’s main point is that Roddick could, if he wanted to, hit his forehand bigger. It’s not a matter of ability or lack of ability, it’s a matter of mindset. We’ll see how these two guys work together beginning next month.
Next, Wawrinka gets Federer in the quarters. His Swiss elder and Olympic doubles partner has won their last four meetings; the most recent was a three-setter on an indoor court in Stockholm in October. Wawrinka has beaten him just once, on clay, two years ago. But by all appearances this is a new Stan. He has Federer’s old coach, Peter Lundgren, who once coached Marat Safin to a win over Federer at this tournament. If anything, Wawrinka has played the better tennis of the two so far in Melbourne. One factor could be timing, whether the match is played at night or during the day. So far Wawrinka’s heavy shots have been penetrating better in the slower night conditions than Federer’s. Chances are it will be under the lights.
The big battle for Wawrinka will be mental, of course. He has spent his career smiling politely when reporters and fans and maybe even his own mother have asked him questions about Federer. You can see him fighting to keep that smile on his face in press conferences; the Swiss press even smiles in commiseration with him when one more dopey foreign journalist brings up the RF word. Courier himself asked Wawrinka after the match tonight if Federer had "told" him how to return serve against Roddick. Wawrinka just smiled that same polite smile and ignored the question.
Will he be able to hit with the same abandon and accuracy? If he does, he can win. Will he swagger against Federer? Will he wail in his face? That could be dangerous. Federer, fellow Swiss, employs an amorphous bellow of his own at times—though he usually goes with the more civilized, Americanized "come on!" these days. Maybe Stan can take him back to his roots. I want to hear them yell back and forth at each other. No, wait, I don’t want to hear that at all. But I do want to see them play.