The feel-good story of the year, starring Stanislas Wawrinka

Stanislas Wawrinka, looking as content with his Australian Open win as the legions of fans he has now accumulated

Considering the strong ‘feel-good’ side to the story of the rise of Stanislas Wawrinka, the nicknames that he has been bestowed with seem a little out of place. ‘Stan the Man’, and now, ‘Stanimal’, are names that you’d ordinarily associate with a physically imposing player who overwhelms his opponents with such vulgar things as brute force and raw power, brutally crushing everything in his path. Where’s the emotional appeal in that? Where’s the heart-warming quality in those names, the quality that is supposedly wrapped all around the Wawrinka saga?

After his 6-3, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 win over Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final, Wawrinka probably couldn’t care less what nickname he’s given (although it’s highly likely that he didn’t care about it before the match either). Once you’re a Grand Slam champion, everything else fades into the background – the dubious nicknames, the questions about your tenacity, even the perennial ‘bridesmaid’ tag that Wawrinka has had to deal with throughout his career, thanks to the exploits of that other Swiss.

What remains intact, however, specially in Wawrinka’s case, is the feel-good factor.

The titanic futility and the ‘awww-worthiness’ of his effort against Novak Djokovic in the fourth round here last year have been well-documented. It was a match that won him a legion of fans; for a change, both of the major camps in the tennis fan world – the Federer one and the Nadal one – were united in their adoration of the same player. The legion expanded even further when a few months later at the US Open Wawrinka again tried heroically, and failed again almost as spectacularly, to dethrone Djokovic in another epic five-setter.

The quiet demeanour, the earnest on-court efforts, the misfortune of being the less-successful countryman of arguably the greatest player of all time, and that howitzer backhand – they all combined to make Wawrinka a universal fan favourite. But as the likes of Gael Monfils and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga will happily tell you, being a fan favourite is not enough. Well okay, maybe for Monfils it is. But not for the remaining 99.99% of the tennis-playing population. At the end of the day, winning is all that matters; everything else is secondary.

So when Wawrinka actually managed to complete the job against Djokovic this year, in yet another barn-burning five-setter, there was no mistaking which story had the most potential to turn into the kind of headline-grabbing event that would make even non-tennis fans sit up and take notice. Rafael Nadal bravely fought through the tournament despite suffering from ghastly blisters, Roger Federer turned back the clock to put in a few vintage performances, and the two of them even played against each other to give the spectators tennis’s version of the Superbowl. But Wawrinka’s march through the draw was the story of the tournament – even before he stepped on the court for the final.

The final, of course, was a whirlpool of brilliance, pain, courage, nervousness and salvation. Some called the match bizarre, some called it ugly, some called it cathartic, but for Wawrinka and tennis historians, it will be memorable more than anything else. There were injury time-outs and arguments with the umpire, and even a few unsavoury boos from the crowd, but ultimately what will remain in memory are Wawrinka’s laser forehands (is there a more improved shot in the ATP right now?), his underrated serve, and the way in which he neutralized the threat of the lefty-topspin-to-one-handed-backhand by refusing to miss with the shot on the most crucial points.

Still, no account of the final can be complete without mention of Nadal’s injury and medical time-outs. The first time-out he took, after holding for 1-2 in the second set (he was a set and a break down at that point), made the Facebook and Twitter universes explode with indignation. Accusations of unsportsmanlike conduct and fake injuries started flying around; it didn’t help that Wawrinka chose that exact moment to get into an argument with the umpire demanding to know the exact cause of the time-out.

The booing that Nadal received when he came back on the court was a little shocking, but it was also a little understandable. As Nadal himself eloquently put it in his presser, the crowd only wanted to watch a great tennis match, to get their money’s worth, and a match frequently interrupted by medical time-outs is not exactly popcorn fare. Nadal was the only visible target the crowd could find for the unfortunate turn of events (they couldn’t really boo the real culprit – the frailties of the human body – could they?), and they vented all of their frustration at that target.

The injury was far from fake, as both the crowd and people all over the world realized soon enough, and the spectacle that unfolded after that was more than a little wince-inducing. Nadal had been rendered almost immobile, Wawrinka looked shaken, and the rhythm of the match changed completely. It started looking less like the final of a Grand Slam and more like an extended torture session.

But it wasn’t a simple matter of a change in momentum, as is being asserted by a lot of Wawrinka loyalists. If Wawrinka’s game had collapsed the moment Nadal returned to the court, we would have been well within our rights to question the timing of the break. But Wawrinka’s game didn’t collapse immediately after the time-out; he actually won four of the next five games, and wrapped up the second set looking like he was going to sprint towards the title.

Clearly, the time-out didn’t affect Wawrinka. What did affect him was the fact that he had gotten really, really close to his first Major triumph. A two sets to love lead, and an opponent who could barely run – how could Wawrinka NOT have smelled the trophy at that point? And that’s when the Swiss showed that his old demons hadn’t been banished completely just yet; with the finish line so close, he promptly froze and handed the third set to Nadal on a platter.

That’s nothing to be ashamed of; better players than Wawrinka have choked away matches in the past against lesser opponents. Would we be ridiculing him today if he had thrown away the fourth and fifth sets too? We might have, but that wouldn’t have been fair, just the way it wasn’t fair when Wawrinka was thwarted all those times in the past despite playing lights-out tennis.

Wawrinka seems to have had his fill of the world’s unfairness though. Getting his groove and his game back in the fourth set, he regained the ascendancy and took the match, even as Nadal seemed to be getting his game back. There was another hiccup before the end, of course – with a 4-2 lead, Wawrinka produced an error-strewn game to get broken back. But there was no denying him a game later, as he put in a commanding love hold to finally seize the advantage for good.

Yesterday’s match may or may not have told us anything new about Nadal. But the tournament as a whole told us a LOT about Wawrinka. That he now has a great forehand to go with his spectacular backhand. That he can compensate for his sometimes-shaky return by cranking up the speed on his serve. That he can go toe-to-toe with the game’s elite in baseline rallies. And most importantly, that he can choke like the worst of us, and then put those jitters out of his mind and get his focus back like the best of us.

Much has been said about Wawrinka’s left forearm tattoo, which supposedly motivates him to ‘fail better’. At first, I found the message of the tattoo to be a little defeatist; what good could failing better possibly do? Let me put it this way: Serena Williams would never want to fail at anything, and she is an all-time great. How far could Wawrinka go if he started his journey, not by aiming for the stars, but by merely hoping to give a better account of himself while failing?

I still think the message is defeatist. But I also think, now, that these things – nicknames, tattoos, the things that players say, the things that we say about them – matter very little in the large scheme of things. It’s entirely possible that Wawrinka got that message tattooed on his arm for no other reason than that he was bored, even if he insists that he swears by it. It’s also perfectly possible that Wawrinka actually used that message to help him, to keep his inner demons at bay just long enough to push himself over the finish line.

What goes on inside a player’s head when he’s out there on the court, trying to find a forehand winner, battling for a slice of history, is something that we can never know, irrespective of how many tattoos are inscribed on that player’s body. And it’s also something that we don’t need to know, even if it is the very thing that separates the Grand Slam winners from the journeymen.

Because if we did know all of that, would we still be amazed to such a great degree by the Wawrinka story? Would we still rejoice in his meteoric rise to superstardom as if we were all somehow a part of it? Would we still tip our hats and raise our glasses to the magnificence that was his performance at this year’s Australian Open?

None of us knows the exact source of motivation that propelled Wawrinka to his first Major title, and we’re all the better for it.

The black Swiss sheep, Stan the Man, Stanimal – we can call him whatever we like, and we can attribute any number of factors to his ascent, but that won’t stop Stanislas Wawrinka from being a certified Grand Slam champion. And neither will it stop his story from being the feel-good story of the year.