As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the US Open, we look back at the 50 champions who have left an indelible mark on this inimitable event.
The tattoo decorating Stan Wawrinka’s left forearm reads: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No Matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
The quote, courtesy of playwright Samuel Beckett, stands as an apt description of Wawrinka’s professional journey. Long one of the sport’s most dogged competitors, the Swiss willed himself to become a Top 20 player and a consistent challenger, but never a true Grand Slam threat. That changed in 2013, when, at age 28, 11 years after he turned pro, he cracked the year-end Top 10 for the first time. He hasn’t looked back since.
Wawrinka’s career officially turned at the 2014 Australian Open, when he stunned Rafael Nadal – and the great majority of the tennis world – to claim his first Grand Slam title. Two years later, he cemented his standing as one of the world’s best on the rough-and-tumble hard courts so well-suited to his gritty game, putting a capstone on a tremendous late-in-tennis-life surge by winning the 2016 US Open title.
Of course, in true Wawrinka fashion, it wasn’t easy. Nor was it expected. The No. 3 seed had to overcome an inspired Dan Evans in the third round, warding off a match point in the fourth-set tiebreak to gut out a five-set thriller. From there, he needed four sets to oust Illya Marchenko and another four in an emotional win over past champion Juan Martin del Potro and a tough outing against former finalist Kei Nishikori.
Meantime, while Wawrinka needed 17 sets to win his final four matches en route to the final, his opponent that day, Novak Djokovic, required just 13 total through six rounds, the product of a bizarre draw filled with walkovers, retirements and routine victories. Throw in that Djokovic had won six of the previous nine Grand Slam events he had entered, and it was quite clear that the Serb was the overwhelming favorite – a general feeling that became consensus after the top seed won the opening set in a tiebreak.
But Wawrinka is not one to take the easy way out, and this match would prove no exception. Rather than wilt, he failed better and better over the ensuing three sets – until he wasn’t failing at all – grinding out a 6-7, 6-4, 7-5, 6-3 victory that earned him a place in the US Open record books.
50 Fact: In turning aside a match point against Evans, Wawrinka became just the seventh player in the Open era to overcome a match point to win a US Open singles title, joining Manuel Orantes (1975), Martina Navratilova (1986), Boris Becker (1989), Pete Sampras (1996), Andy Roddick (2003) and Djokovic (2011).
