The shorts were great in the way that designs rejected as tablecloth are. So was him being 30 and not some prodigious freak who was winning tournaments before he could walk and a grand slam before he could drive.
His general outsiderness has always been appealing. He is hardly a renegade upending the cosy Djokovic-Federer-Murray-Nadal quartet, and they hardly a cartel. But he is so not one of them that a little anti-establishmentarian love is unavoidable.
None of this was the best thing about Stan Wawrinka’s French Open win last week though. That was his backhand. Or, more to the point, it was not the backhand itself — overwhelming as it is — but the fact that he was relying so heavily on it.
At times it was his answer no matter what the question. Novak Djokovic would work him, corner to corner, be one shot away from a winner and Wawrinka would rip a backhand down the line.
Djokovic would come to the net, Wawrinka ripped a backhand past him. Djokovic would serve big, Wawrinka creamed a backhand back harder. Time was playing tricks: this was not clay but grass, not Roland Garros but Wimbledon, 1991 not 2015 when Michael Stich’s backhand alone undid the greatness of Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker.
Wawrinka did it so often, so flawlessly, it risked creating its own comedy genre, of crossover Fifa jokes such as: “The backhand was so good it was an oblique tribute to the backhand skills of countryman, Sepp Blatter” or, “So good, it deserves a Fifa sting”.
Wawrinka has a great game. His serve, untrustworthy a few years ago, is breaking out beyond solid. The range of his vision and power are evident in his forehands too.
But because modern tennis fetishises one-handed backhands, it appropriates almost all of the attention on his game, away from the rest of it. It is, in every sense, the moneymaker. Wawrinka knows it, his opponents know it and we know it.
And it is the best thing because his reliance on it, and its celebration, goes a little against the grain of modernity. Sports today rewards mostly those athletes who submerge, but not entirely sacrifice, their primary skill and genius, that which has got them to where they are in the first place, at the altar of multi-skills.
To pick just two, look at football and cricket. Attacking players, increasingly, need to be able to begin the defence as high up the pitch as possible. Attackers should be able to track back, to tackle, to not switch off when defending corners, and also to create. To simply poach goals, even if it is 20 a season, is no longer enough.
Neither for bowlers is simply bowling and taking wickets. They need to transform from tail-end bunnies into lower-order batsmen, capable of prolonging a batting effort in time and runs. If a fast bowler cannot field, he cannot guarantee his place on fast bowling alone.
Wawrinka’s opponent at Roland Garros is kind of an example. There is no one shot of Djokovic’s that really stands out, that he really relies on. He does everything very, very well. Indisputably it has worked. Most times it will be enough for him to win.
Occasionally, however, when one exceptional weapon overpowers a very good arsenal, as Wawrinka did in Paris, after celebrating it, it is worth wondering. In particular, what are the costs of blunting an edge in an athlete to make them more rounded, the value of that lost sharpness; to adding so many strings to their bow that it sometimes weighs them down?
Wayne Rooney’s entire career could probably form a legitimate answer to that question. In trying to broaden him out, to make him good at everything, have England and Manchester United lost some of what it was that made him truly special?
At around the same time as Wawrinka’s win, Pat Venditte was making his Major League Baseball debut for the Oakland Athletics. As an ambidextrous pitcher, clearly he was going to get everyone excited. It is just so futuristic.
Still, what if he had practised his entire life with his more dominant right arm since the age? How good, or maybe better, would that have made him already?
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