It was, on the whole, a quiet round of 16 in Shanghai today. The top five seeds advanced to the quarterfinals, and neither of the two upsets—Radek Stepanek over John Isner, Tommy Haas over Janko Tipsarevic—were of the shocking variety. More unexpected to me was Sam Querrey taking a set from Tomas Berdych, but even that ended the way most of us thought it would, with the Czech’s third win over the American this season.
Then, at the end of the day, we got a very big surprise. Stan Wawrinka won the first set over his erratic Swiss countryman, Roger Federer, and took the second set to a tiebreaker. The combination of Wawrinka’s killer backhand and Federer’s less-than-sharp forehand made it look like Stan might get his first win in three years over his doubles partner and singles nemesis. Alas, for Wawrinka, three points were enough to turn the tide against him one more time.
At 3-3 in the second set, Federer was reeling. He had given back an early break and now found himself down 0-30; his first two shots of the game were wild misses. But he worked his way back to 30-3o and watched with relief as Wawrinka flipped a backhand wide for no reason. Federer held.
Two games later, at 4-4, Wawrinka made it even closer to the finish line. He reached 30-40 on Federer’s serve and had a look at his favorite shot, a backhand down the line. Instead of drilling it into the corner, as he had been for most of the evening, Wawrinka tightened up just enough to put it in the net. Federer held again.
Fast forward to the tiebreaker, 3-3, Wawrinka serving, four points from the match. This time he has a look at a hanging mid-court forehand. Rather than drive it into the open court and toward Federer’s weaker backhand side, he goes into his forehand instead. Federer, waiting there, cracks a passing shot by him. He wins the tiebreaker 7-4. In what feels like a matter of minutes, Wawrinka is sleepwalking woefully to the net after losing the third set 6-0. Gutted and silent, he gives Federer’s hand a quick slap before heading for the exit. Federer celebrates the win reluctantly, with little more than a smile, even though it means he’ll be ranked No. 1 for a 300th week.
Does Stan Wawrinka ever wonder what his career would have been like if he had come from another country? France, Holland, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, even? His father is German; why couldn’t he have been from Germany? If he had, Wawrinka almost surely wouldn’t own an Olympic gold medal in doubles, but he just as surely wouldn’t have had to live his tennis life so deeply in the shadow of another man.
Wawrinka has had a fair amount of ups and downs over the years, but there’s no mistaking his physical talent. He's currently ranked No. 17, and he went as high as No. 9 in 2008. But in eight years on tour he’s made just two Grand Slam quarterfinals—one of which, naturally, he lost to Federer. This is a surprisingly poor record for someone whose backhand has been called the best one-hander in the game. Obviously being in the company of the all-time men’s Slam champion hasn’t inspired Wawrinka to greater heights at the majors. It’s as if, instead, he’s ceded that turf to his big tennis brother. If Wawrinka has a reputation as a perennial fourth-round and quarterfinal loser, it’s partly because Federer has beaten him 10 times in those two rounds.
The two men are friends, though that term will always be complicated for tennis players who have to face each other on a regular basis. Their voodoo celebration at the 2008 Olympics is famous, and I once passed by a practice session of theirs where they had spent a good 40 minutes standing at the net, talking and laughing. Two years ago at the Australian Open, Federer was asked on court who he would be rooting for in the upcoming fourth-round match between Wawrinka and Andy Roddick. Federer said, with what I thought at the time was surprising forthrightness, “My man Stanley!” Of course, once Wawrinka did beat Roddick, Federer dismantled him in the next round.
At the Olympics this summer, Federer passed up a chance to carry the Swiss flag for a third time. The honor fell to Wawrinka, though it didn’t totally work out in his favor. While Federer skipped the opening ceremony to rest, Wawrinka stood in the London arena, and then lost his first-round match to Andy Murray. In 2010, Wawrinka appeared to have hit on the best way of reaching his potential: By hiring a former coach of Federer’s, Peter Lundgren. The partnership worked for a time, as Lundgren encouraged him to become more aggressive in his play and demeanor, to stop being the little brother. They split a year later.
Wawrinka is now 1-12 against Federer. That’s not an uncommon record for Federer’s opponents, but until today it seemed as if Stan had thrown in the towel against him. Since beating Federer at Monte Carlo in 2009, he had won just a single set in their next eight matches. Late in their quarterfinal at Indian Wells last year, Wawrinka appeared to concede the result when he stopped going through his usual routine of inspecting each ball before serving. He just took whatever the ball kid threw him and served it up. He lost 3 and 4.
It looked, for two sets, like that had changed today in Shanghai. In the end, though, the match summed up their “rivalry” and their careers in a nutshell. Wawrinka couldn’t deliver the death blow, while Federer could. The forehand he smacked past him at 3-3 in the tiebreaker essentially won him two sets. It punctured what was left of Wawrinka’s wavering confidence.
As I said, there was little joy from Federer at the finish. When he served and volleyed on the final point, it looked like he just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. Wawrinka had thrown in the towel again. The TV commentators took him to task for it, but I had trouble blaming him. As he trudged toward the net, averting his eyes from Federer’s for as long as possible, I remembered a press conference from the U.S. Open a few years ago, one that I've always thought was a good representation of Stan Wawrinka’s career.
He had, I believe, just beaten Andy Murray to reach the quarterfinals, but the (mostly American) reporters in the interview room were fixated one someone else: Roger Federer. One after another, they asked Wawrinka what it was like to come from the same country as the great man. When the third or fourth question along those lines was tossed out, Wawrinka looked over at the members of the Swiss press who were in the room. He shook his head for a second, and smiled. Then, patiently and to the best of his ability, he gave his answer.