For his fifteenth entry into the Australian Open, Stan Wawrinka struggled for almost 3 hours and four hotly contested sets 7-5 6-7 (4) 6-4 6-4 in the Melbourne Arena to come to tip of the tough Damir Dzumhur and thus preserve his invincibility in career in the 1st round on the side of Melbourne Park.
The Vaudois, who was playing his 200th Grand Slam match on Tuesday – he is 5th in the list of active players behind the “Big Four” – showed two faces in an encounter that closely resembled that of his third round in September in ‘US Open, where he had beaten in pain Paolo Lorenzi (6-4 7-6 7-6).
First a patient worker, he waited for the soft spot of the 27-year-old Bosnian to get his hands on a first set in which he committed only 4 direct faults. Anxious to put the head of the 92nd world player under water, “Stan The Man” began to water everywhere. Result, 23 errors in the second run and a horrible tie-break …
Put in difficulty by the game while serve-volley of Damir Dzumhur, Stan Wawrinka had the merit of not giving in to panic. Brilliant on his faceoffs – 21 aces in total -, the triple Grand Slam winner took the service of his opponent in the ninth game of the last two sets to complete a match that had everything of a trap.
Jérémy Santallo
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Created: 21.01.2020, 07h11
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