Stan Wawrinka earned his first win in 15 months by beating Reilly Opelka at the 2022 Italian Open in Rome.
Wawrinka is far removed from his best days which saw him beat the likes of Novak Djokovic in some very important matches. Wawrinka won the 2015 French Open and while he’s not as good these days, he’s still capable of some really good performances on clay.
The most recent good showing from the Swiss player came at the Italian Open in Rome, where he beat Reilly Opelka 3-6, 7-5, 6-2 to earn his first win in 15 months.
The main reason for Wawrinka’s lack of wins isn’t so much that he played poorly. The reason is that he didn’t play at all. The Swiss veteran called time early on his 2021 season after the Qatar Open, undergoing surgery to address ankle problems in both legs.
It was a complicated surgery and needed a really long time of recovery, which extended for basically over a year. The first event back for Wawrinka since the surgery was the 2022 Marbella Challenger where he lost to Elias Ymer in two sets.
His next event was the Monte-Carlo Masters, where he faced Alexander Bublik and played pretty well. He still wasn’t able to win the match but did win a set. His first win finally came at the Italian Open, and it came against Opelka, who, interestingly enough, had a tremendous run at the ATP Masters 1000 event the year before.
Opelka made a run to the semi-final that year, losing only to Rafael Nadal. This year, though, it was Wawrinka who proved better, as he aims to improve with every tournament that he plays this year.
It almost didn’t happen as Opelka was up 6-3, 4-2, and had a chance to go up 5-2. Wawrinka turned that around completely to win not only the second set but also the final see,t with the final score being 3-6, 7-5, 6-2.
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