Maintaining Consistency Still Proving to Be an Issue for Stan Wawrinka
Predicting which version of Stan Wawrinka will show up at any given tournament is often a futile exercise.
We know the dizzying heights he can reach. The 31-year-old Swiss is a three-time Grand Slam champion, his most recent triumph coming at the U.S. Open earlier this summer. The ultimate heat check player in men's tennis, Wawrinka is capable of hitting an extra gear few opponents can answer when he gets into a rhythm.
The problem comes with producing that level on a consistent basis.
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Take this season as a prime example. Wawrinka lost before the quarterfinals at seven of the nine Masters Series events, his best showing a semifinal finish in Toronto. At majors, Wawrinka tasted glory in New York but also succumbed to a fourth-round shuttering from the Australian Open and a second-round stumble at Wimbledon.
After helping guide Wawrinka to the U.S. Open title, coach Magnus Norman told USA Today's Nick McCarvel: "He's very vulnerable in the beginning of tournaments. We still haven't found the key of how he can be a little bit more consistent."
They both realize extreme fluctuations exist in his play. When things are firing on all cylinders like they did at the U.S. Open, Wawrinka and his gutsy, powerful game can make any opponent look silly. On the other end of the spectrum, he's not immune from lapses in concentration or error-prone days that will leave you scratching your head.
This is the No. 3 player in the world after all, so we're nitpicking to a degree. But what holds Wawrinka back from being on the level of Novak Djokovic or Andy Murray is that overall lack of consistency.
It's essentially a given that those two guys will be battling deep into tournaments wherever they travel. For Wawrinka, there's more of a struggle to avoid early round upsets or off days as Norman alluded to.
Those concerns surfaced again this fall.
Reveling in his U.S. Open victory, Wawrinka's hit a bit of a lull. In St. Petersburg, rising teenager Alexander Zverev broke his 11-match winning streak in finals. That result preceded a third-round defeat to Gilles Simon in Shanghai and a quarterfinal upset at the hands of Mischa Zverev in Basel.
In Paris for the last Masters Series event of 2016, Wawrinka dropped his opening match in three tense sets to a then 91st-ranked Jan-Lennard Struff, the type of player he should toy with on a normal day.
Making his fourth consecutive appearance at the World Tour Finals, Wawrinka next ran into a buzzsaw in the form of Kei Nishikori, who routed him by a score of 6-2, 6-3.
To what extent injuries are factoring into this mini slump is unclear, although a back problem forced Wawrinka out of the Japan Open in September, and this week he hinted at some soreness in his knee.
"I was a little bit slow on everything," Wawrinka told Sky Sports' Matt Westby after the Nishikori loss. "I was hesitating a lot with my game, my movement."
Dealt a third-straight loss, he finally ended his skid with a resounding 7-6 (3), 7-6 (3) win over seventh-ranked Marin Cilic. A sorely needed result, it kept his hopes of advancing past the round-robin stage alive.
From getting smoked by Nishikori to outlasting Cilic, Wawrinka is keeping us guessing like he always does. But to build on the momentum from his most recent victory and have a shot at the title, he'll have to go through a red-hot Murray.
"All I know is if I want to have a chance to qualify, I need to win," Wawrinka told ATPWorldTour.com. "That's all I'm trying to do. I'm going to try to play my best tennis, to beat the World No. 1. It's going to be a tough match."
Murray owns a 9-7 advantage in their head-to-head, though Wawrinka beat him at the O2 Arena during last year's World Tour Finals. In the midst of a 21-match winning streak, the Scot is overflowing with confidence.
Because the courts are playing slightly faster this year, that should aid Wawrinka if he can get his timing down and reduce his unforced errors. It takes a special kind of firepower to hit past defensive sage Murray, but Wawrinka is one of the few who actually can do the job.
Staring at a big opportunity to move beyond his post-U.S. Open hangover and head into 2017 on a positive note, Wawrinka needs this type of win. With uncertainty surrounding Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and even Djokovic, Stan the Man is in an ideal position to benefit from his peers' misfortune.
Nothing is ever so easy with Wawrinka. At this point, you have to accept the good with the bad because those bright moments are truly legendary.
Maybe he can script another one this week in London.
All statistics are courtesy of ATPWorldTour.com unless otherwise noted.
Joe Kennard is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report.
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