Stan Wawrinka is about to bring his glittering career to an end at the Swiss Indoors this week.
The 41-year-old has been on Tour for more than 20 years, reached a career-high of three in an era of Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer, and wrestled three Grand Slams off them too.
His 2015 French Open final win over Djokovic is arguably one of the greatest performances of all time, as his unrelenting power and brilliance proved too much for the all-time great.
But time waits for no man. Wawrinka has been rinsing every last drop out of his body, with the Swiss still relishing the fight despite being ranked outside the top 100.
The Swiss is not the player he once was but it seems he does not care one iota about that. Wawrinka is out there week in, week out, purely for the love of the sport. The last page of his career is about to be written, with Jiri Lehecka potentially the last man he ever plays as a professional.
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If that is to be his end, then Wawrinka will do his utmost to have him make such an end as to be worthy of remembrance. Before all the tributes rain in on the single-hander, one of his compatriots told Tennis365 about what he is like as a player and a person.
Viktorija Golubic grew up watching Swiss heroes Federer and Wawrinka, who won a combined 23 majors, strut their stuff on Tour, at a time when the latter struggled to break out of the former’s long shadow.
In time, he did that, something former world No 35 Golubic was in awe of. The 34-year-old got to spend a bit more time with her countryman at the Paris Olympics in 2024 and talked about the “incredible” impact he has had over the course of nearly 25 years as a professional.
Earlier this year, Golubic exclusively told Tennis365, “I got to know him a bit better over the last few years; obviously, he’s a bit older, and he was already at the top when I was a junior.
“It was just so impressive to see him winning three slams in the generation of Rafa, Roger, Novak, Andy [Murray], so that’s something I think that is something incredible he did.
“I feel like it was tough for him to get the same attention in Switzerland because there was Roger, right, but he’s such a champion, and obviously, with his game style, it was great to watch him and his fighting mentality.
“And having to share the Olympics with him in Paris, that was pretty nice. It was just good to see kind of more of him on the human side, and it was interesting, so I hope he’s having a good rest of the year and really takes it all in and does something good.”
Wawrinka will go down as having arguably the greatest single-handed backhand of all time. Whether he can achieve one last hurrah in Basel remains to be seen.
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