A shattered knee, a spectacular record, more than 30 years and nothing to prove. They seem like the ideal ingredients for an athlete to decide to retire, but Stan Wawrinka He didn’t, and it seems like he can reap the rewards of titanic effort and sacrifice. The Swiss suffered a very serious injury to the cartilage of one of his knees that many thought would definitely take him away from professional tennis, but he returned. At his own pace, suffering hard defeats during 2018 in which each lateral displacement on the track seemed an odyssey and in 2019 where his good moments were skirmishes, arrived at the end of the season. He never stopped believing good old Stan and in him Rolex Paris Masters 2020 returns to a Masters 1000 quarterfinal for the second time since knee surgery.
His triumph on a hard, fast and indoor court like the one at the Accor Arena shows that he is in top physical shape and that At 35, he still has plenty of arguments to be important. A competitor of his level only persists in the circuit if he sees himself with options for something great and the quarterfinals harvested in the US Open 2019 and Australian Open 2020 have been the perfect spur for the Swiss to have the humility to play ATP tournaments Challenger Tour this season in order to gain competitive pace. His intelligence on the track and those winning intangibles that he treasures will always last and were key to beating Andrey Rublev, one of the fittest players on the circuit, in a memorable match.
“It was difficult to find a tactical solution because Andrey was playing with more power than I was and it took away some of my confidence. Luckily, I started to serve better and I realized that my shots could overwhelm him from the back of the court. victory and I know that I must try to recover well for the next battle, “assured a Stan Wawrinka whose game ended after midnight and who will have to face an opponent as difficult as Alexander Zverev. “He is a very complicated opponent for me, I have lost several times with him and I will need my best version,” he commented, recalling the three games that cement his face to face and in which he was defeated against the Teuton (Saint Petersburg 2016, Miami 2017 and Open Australia 2020). A great duel is expected in the quarterfinals of the Rolex Paris Masters 2020.
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