Opinion
January 24, 2026 — 5.37am
January 24, 2026 — 5.37am
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Thursday night and there was Stan Wawrinka, 40, peeling off one single-handed backhand after another to defeat a rival young enough to be his son. France’s Arthur Gea, 21, wilted with cramps in the fifth-set tiebreaker. Stan looked fresh as an Edelweiss. He jokingly promised the crowd he would share a beer with them. And that backhand, what a thing of beauty.
Wawrinka’s dad is a social worker and his mum is a biodynamic farmer. He grew up on the farm they run with a staff of people with intellectual disabilities and drug and alcohol addictions. A late maturer, he won three grand slam tournaments including the Australian Open in 2014, beating Novak Djokovic in the quarters and Rafael Nadal in the final.
His persistence in 2026 is a reminder that the great rivalries in tennis aren’t isolated duels; their greatness depends on what lies beneath, who constitutes the next level down, who the greats have to beat before they get to the top.
Will the Carlos Alcaraz-Jannik Sinner rivalry in men’s tennis ever put the hook in fans the way previous rivalries did? It’s too soon to tell and maybe too old and crusty to ask, but so far
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