Stan Wawrinka included in 2023 Monte Carlo Masters wildcard entrants

| by Alex Waite

The 2014 Monte Carlo Masters winner Stan Wawrinka, will enter this season's edition of the competition as a wildcard.

The ATP 1000 Masters tournament will take place between April 9th to 16th, 2023, and Wawrinka will return for a 12th main-draw appearance at the Monte-Carlo Country Club.

In 2014, former world number three Wawrinka beat compatriot Roger Federer in the final to lift his first-ever Monte Carlo title. The Swiss player also reached the semi-final in 2009, and he has a total record of 21 wins and 11 losses at the Monte-Carlo Country Club.

So far, in 2023, Wawrinka has had an up-and-down campaign. The 38-year-old recently missed out on appearing at the Estoril Open, and he reached the last 16 at Indian Wells before crashing out after a heavy defeat to Jannik Sinner.

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The official Monte-Carlo Masters Twitter channel announced that another former champion, Fabio Fognini, will also enter the 2023 event as a wildcard. In 2019, Italian Fognini raced to the final and beat Andrey Rublev, Alexander Zverev, and Rafael Nadal as he stormed to the final and eventually bested Dusan Lajovic to win the event.

21-year-old British player Jack Draper and Monaco native Valentin Vacherot will also be wildcards heading to the 2023 event. World number 322 Vacherot will be the only Monegasque player to compete at the competition this year.

They will all hope that the wild card entry will give them a chance to make a deep run at a tournament that they wouldn't be otherwise able to enter.

All of them should draw big crowds to their matches, for obvious reasons. While two are former champions, Draper is a rising star, and Vacherot is a home player, who will have the crowd behind him, despite being by far the lowest-ranked player in the main draw of the tournament.

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