Stan Wawrinka's French Open 2015: Novak Djokovic, a backhand, and some famous shorts

New York Times

3 hours ago

ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — Ten years ago this weekend, an expectant Roland Garros crowd awaited a coronation. The erstwhile king of clay, nine-time champion Rafael Nadal, had been deposed in the quarterfinal, and the man who had dished out that comprehensive defeat, Novak Djokovic, would assume the throne.
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Djokovic was the dominant world No. 1, having won two of the previous three majors. All he needed to complete the career Grand Slam was the French Open, and having won his previous 28 matches, he was the overwhelming favourite to do so on a sunny Paris afternoon in June 2015. Having finally got past Nadal at Roland Garros after losing to him six times, Djokovic saw the finish line that had looked unreachable for so long.
Instead, Djokovic was on the receiving end of one of the finest performances ever seen in a men's Grand Slam final. The greatest player in the world was reduced to the role of supporting actor by Stan Wawrinka, who delivered a masterclass of a performance in possibly the most hideous shorts ever seen on a tennis court.
Wawrinka won three Grand Slams, the Davis Cup and an Olympic gold in doubles, but this was the high point of his career. Aside from Djokovic's performance against Nadal in 2021, and countless examples by the Spaniard, it was the finest at Roland Garros by any man in the modern era.
Wawrinka hit 60 winners to Djokovic's 30, and only made four more unforced errors: 45 to 41. He won 76 percent of his first-serve points against the sport's best returner, who that year was at his statistical peak, winning 93 percent of his matches in 2015. The French Open final was the only match Djokovic lost at a major that year.
The defeat coming against someone playing such courageous tennis is why Wawrinka's triumph still resonates. Those who follow sports tend to root for this kind of upset, for bravery to be rewarded in this way, but it rarely happens. Normally, the underdog eventually runs out of steam.
Not Wawrinka, who was nicknamed 'diesel' by his Swiss compatriot Roger Federer, for the way he seemed to get stronger as matches wore on. Wawrinka beat Djokovic in Paris, and again in the U.S. Open final the following year, having lost the first set. On only two other occasions in his 37 major finals has Djokovic won the first set but lost the match.
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Wawrinka called it the 'match of my life' in his on-court interview, and a decade on, he sticks with that view.
'If you look at all the things like it being the French Open final, Novak Djokovic, No. 1 in the world, he has won almost 30 matches in a row, and playing the way I played for more than three hours, yes probably,' he said in a video interview from Roland Garros last month, where he was still competing, aged 40.
The overall win was achieved with some outlandish moments, including a single-handed backhand winner down the line in the third set that he hit in the postage-stamp gap between the net post and the IBM box.
😱 @stanwawrinka goes around the net in the 2015 French Open final 🏆
🇫🇷 Roland Garros – #YouSayWePlay: Best Men's Finals
📅 June 5
⏰ 10:30
📺 Eurosport 1
📱💻🖥 Eurosport Player: https://t.co/0Fa7uXvkcz pic.twitter.com/HhLOMzp1mA
— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) June 4, 2020
It was that kind of day.
Wawrinka occupied a curious place in men's tennis in 2015. He could blast anyone off the court on his day, but he was never as consistent as the Big Four. Nor did he have, nor want, their otherworldly levels of dedication and focus. When Wawrinka reached the French Open final, he said that growing up, his dream was to play at Roland Garros, not to win it. Winning it was for 'mutants,' he said.
This explains why Wawrinka, who won as many majors as Andy Murray, never made the Big Four a Big Five — even in his own mind.
'He's clearly in a completely different league than me,' Wawrinka told UK newspaper The Times last year.
Wawrinka reached four Grand Slam finals to Murray's 11, nine Grand Slam semifinals to Murray's 21, and won one ATP Masters 1,000 title (the rung below the majors) to Murray's 14. Wawrinka also beat the Big Three far less often than Murray — he had 12 wins against Federer, Nadal and Djokovic to Murray's 29 — and he had dreadful head-to-head records against Federer and Nadal.
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Wawrinka was a giant-killer, but only on a few extremely memorable occasions. He beat defending champion Djokovic at the 2014 Australian Open, before beating Nadal, who picked up an early injury, in the final. That run, together with his wins over Federer and Djokovic at Roland Garros in 2015, makes him the last man to beat two of the Big Three at the same Grand Slam.
When he won his first Grand Slam in Melbourne, Wawrinka was 28, and his late-career blossoming came after making some important changes to his team. He brought in Magnus Norman as his coach in 2013, alongside Federer's former physical trainer, Pierre Paganini. Both turned out to be inspired decisions — those two appointments transformed his mind and body.
Norman turned out to be especially important to Wawrinka's Roland Garros win, having reached the final himself in 2000. He also masterminded what was at the time the only win over Nadal at the French Open, coaching Robin Söderling to his 2009 upset. There were echoes of that fearless performance in Wawrinka's upset of Djokovic.
'Both amazing performances,' Norman said in a video interview from his home in Stockholm last month before joining up with Wawrinka, who he still coaches, for this year's French Open.
'They both went out to win the match instead of hoping the other would give it away. So it's fair to compare those two wins.'
Wawrinka and Norman felt good about 2015 from the start. Wawrinka lost in the French Open first round the previous year, but he felt good this time — helped by beating Nadal in the quarterfinals of the Italian Open in Rome a couple of weeks earlier.
At Roland Garros, Wawrinka only dropped one set in the first four rounds, to set up a quarterfinal against Federer. He had only won two of his 18 matches against his compatriot, and never found it easy playing him. The previous year they had won the Davis Cup together a couple of weeks after a locker-room argument at the ATP Finals, which followed a feisty semifinal encounter. Wawrinka said that 'it's always been mentally tricky' facing him, so to get the better of him, in straight sets, 'gave me extra confidence for after.'
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Wawrinka's 6-4, 6-3, 7-6(4) victory was the only time he beat Federer at a major, and he lost their final eight meetings.
In the semifinals, he outlasted the home favorite, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, on a sweltering afternoon in Paris, in front of a crowd desperately trying to get their man over the line. It helped that Wawrinka, a Francophone from Lausanne, which is close to the French border, was an honorary home player in Paris.
Wawrinka's 6-3, 6-7(1), 7-6(3), 6-4 win lasted nearly four hours. The length of the match had a huge bearing on his destiny. It meant that the second semifinal of the day, between Djokovic and Murray, had to be stopped for bad light with the score at two sets all.
Wawrinka could then spend the Saturday practicing with Norman, while Djokovic had to come back and play a fifth set. They hit together on an outside court while listening to the noise from Court Philippe-Chatrier, interpreting who Wawrinka's final opponent would be through the cheers of the crowd. They watched the final stages in the locker room, discovering that it was going to be Djokovic after all.
Norman said the prep was going to be fairly similar, whoever ended up winning. Wawrinka said that ordinarily, he would have had a preference for who he played, but on this occasion, was fine either way. 'Because with Novak he's the biggest challenge but at the same time if I lose, it's not that bad,' he said of a player who he remains close to.
Wawrinka went into the match having lost his last 14 matches against Djokovic, and his feeling that there was nothing to lose stood in contrast with Djokovic being on the cusp of history. Murray's coach at the time, Amélie Mauresmo, picked up on Djokovic's edginess during the semifinal. 'He is very tense there, very tense,' Mauresmo said in a news conference.
Norman felt confident because of how relaxed Wawrinka seemed, alongside his ability to out-hit opponents. His charge's calm was an illusion.
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'I've been trying to hide it for 20 years,' he said. 'The Sunday, I felt way more nervous. I was really not feeling comfortable, thinking that I was 30 years old, so maybe it's going to be my last final.'
Wawrinka went in knowing that any lapses would be terminal. 'In a second, he can be back,' Wawrinka said of Djokovic's resilience. 'He can break you because he is always going to put you under pressure. He returns every single ball, he's going to make you play all the time. So you cannot mentally open up even a little bit — you have to be full focus on what you're going to do and the way you're going to do it until the last point.'
He was so nervous he even had a couple of drinks the night before the final — another sign of the everyman quality that made him more relatable than many elite athletes.
When Djokovic won the first set, the key for Wawrinka was not to start panicking. He and Norman had spoken before the match about taking it one set at a time. When Djokovic sent a backhand long to give up the second set and then smashed his racket, Wawrinka knew that he was properly in the final: 'At that point, I felt like, 'I'm gonna make it difficult for him from now on.' If he wins, that means he's better than me, but I know I'm going to deliver my best,' he said.
Tactically, a key message from Norman was that Wawrinka needed to find a balance between playing aggressively, but not going for broke too quickly. They felt confident that Wawrinka's heavier groundstrokes could wear Djokovic down. Wawrinka could live with the backhand-to-backhand exchanges that so few players could, and could even dominate them.
Swinging freely when trailing is one thing. It's another to do it as the finish line gets closer. But Wawrinka started playing more aggressively and with more panache as he got closer to victory, playing a close-to-perfect return game with Djokovic serving at 2-3 in the third set.
He hit a huge forehand that Djokovic couldn't handle, a forehand winner down the line, a backhand winner down the line, and then a forehand winner crosscourt.
The greatest return game anyone has ever played against Novak Djokovic.
Happy 40th birthday to the amazing @stanwawrinka 🌟 pic.twitter.com/76ug0lbAzh
— Bastien Fachan (@BastienFachan) March 28, 2025
Watching the game back, Wawrinka said: 'I was feeling good. I just felt like: 'You're in the final, you're confident, you're playing your best tennis, you can go for the shot and just make decisions. When you decide to do something, just do it, don't hesitate, don't think too much.''
Two games later, Wawrinka hit one of the finest shots seen in a Grand Slam final, when he dealt with an angled Djokovic backhand by threading the needle in a way very few players can.
'I saw his short cross and I was like, 'I don't have much option,'' Wawrinka said, watching it back.
'So I just thought, I would slide a little bit longer — make the ball go a little more and go between.'
The best shot of his career? 'I think the best shot is the match point, because it was the one that won the title.'
Though it feels inevitable looking back that Wawrinka would win, he played the big points better than Djokovic, which was, and remains, one of the hardest tasks in men's tennis. Wawrinka came from 30-0 down on Djokovic's break at 5-4 in the second set, and then fought back from 0-40 down on his own serve at 3-4 in the fourth set, immediately breaking Djokovic at 4-4 to get the chance to serve for the title.. Wawrinka also saved a break point when serving out his 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 win.
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As he predicted, Djokovic was going to be right there until the very end, ready to pounce and turn things around.
Wawrinka's bravery is what struck those who were there, including Djokovic. 'I lost to a better player who played some courageous tennis and deserved to win,' he said in his post-match news conference.
The on-court trophy presentation was emotional. Djokovic, runner-up for a third time with everyone believing it was his year, cried as he was given a two-minute round of applause by a French crowd who had taken him to their hearts in his unexpected defeat.
Djokovic went on to win the French Open 12 months later and a decade on, Djokovic believes that Wawrinka produced one of the best performances ever put in against him.
'It was one of the toughest losses for me because by that time I still hadn't won Roland Garros,' he said in a news conference in April.
'I'm not playing Rafa for a change in the finals, and I liked my chances to win my first French Open title. But then Stan stole it from me, and he played some incredible tennis.'
Wawrinka credited Norman in his on-court interview. 'This one is for you. You've won it,' he said.
'I still get the shivers thinking about it. It was so unselfish of him to do it. He knew how much that meant to me,' Norman said 10 years later.
The backhand. The courage. The power. But what about the red, white and grey plaid shorts?
They became a major talking point during Wawrinka's title run, and he draped them over the desk as he came in for his post-final press conference. 'It will be in the museum of Roland Garros,' Wawrinka said as he entered the interview room. 'You will see my shorts every day if you want.'
'We still joke around telling that the reason why he played so well is because of the shorts,' Djokovic said in April, before adding with a laugh:
'I don't know how many of you remember the famous shorts that he was wearing, and I really hated him since then. But, no, we're good buddies, of course I joke. He's an incredible player, someone I really admire as a person as well.'
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The shorts are now hanging up on a wall in Norman's house in Stockholm. 'He gave them to me, with the match shirt and everything,' Norman said.
'He framed them for me. I love them, of course.'
After that Roland Garros title, Wawrinka beat Djokovic in the following year's U.S. Open final, and was then destroyed by Nadal in the French Open final of 2017. He had knee surgery shortly after and has never been a regular presence at the sharp end of majors since. Once he retires, Norman's plan is for the whole team to go and celebrate Wawrinka's career achievements, in a way that's often hard to do in the moment.
For the moment, Wawrinka carries on, ranked No. 138 and regularly playing ATP Challenger tournaments, the rung below the professional tour. He and Norman insist that he continues because of his love and passion for the sport. His willingness to do that and dedication to his craft are as impressive to Djokovic as the performance that broke his heart 10 years ago.
He's very underestimated in the discussions,' Djokovic said. 'He's won an Olympic gold, three Grand Slams, just an amazing career. He's 40 years old, with god knows how many surgeries on the knees and everything, and he's still pushing, still coming in, still coming in early in the tournament.
'Showing up, one of the first people that shows up in the club, and practices early, and does everything that he needs to do, even more. So that's super impressive. I really admire him and Andy (Murray) as well for that, going to the Challenger level, trying to build your rankings, trying to get matches.
'I've never done that, never was in that position that I have to, hopefully I don't need to, build rankings again back to go to Challenger level. But I really admire that. That says a lot about the champion spirit and mentality that these guys have.'