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Stan Wawrinka during his victory in the 1st round of the 2026 Australian Open.
Credit: Getty Images
It was in Australia, in a way, that it all began for him. First during a memorable round of 16 – despite the defeat – against Novak Djokovic in 2013. Then with his coronation in 2014, the first of his three major titles. Twelve years later, “Stan the (Eternal) Man” continues to write his legend in Melbourne, where he qualified this Monday morning for the second round by beating Laslo Djere after a big fight lasting 3 hours and 20 minutes during which he once again displayed treasures of bravery to win in four sets, 5-7, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(4).
A victory far from trivial, of course, and particularly on a statistical level. At 40 years and 310 days (age calculated at the end of the tournament), the Swiss became the second forty-year-old in the 21st century to win a match in a major tournament, after Ivo Karlovic who was barely older (40 years and 339 days) when he also won a round at the Australian Open, in 2020.
Before that, we had to go back, very far to find traces of other forty-somethings roaring in Grand Slam tournaments. Jimmy Connors was the last of his kind since he won a match on his 40th birthday at the 1992 US Open, the last of his legendary career.
In loving memory of the “dinos” Rosewall, Ulrich and Gonzales
Wawrinka, who is playing his last season on the circuit, will however not beat the record (Open era) of three 44-year-old “dinosaurs” who won a Grand Slam match in the 1970s: the American Pancho Gonzales at Wimbledon in 1972, the Dane Torben Ulrich at Roland-Garros in 1973, and the Australian Ken Rosewall at the 1978 Australian Open.
But it is very anecdotal for the Vaudois, happy above all to have himself returned to a victory in a Major which had eluded him since 2024. And even if he was able to count on a Laslo Djere who was always very conciliatory when the atmosphere got heated, the former world number three demonstrated a fairly impressive state of tennis and physical form at this age which is supposed to be canonical. “I’m not young anymore, I have to be careful but my passion for this sport is intact”, he concluded on the microphone, as moved as he was radiant.
