Record-breaking Stan Wawrinka battled through a five-set epic to reach the third round and extend his final Australian Open by another match.
The 40-year-old wildcard, who will be retiring at the end of the season, defeated the French qualifier Arthur Gea 3-6, 6-3, 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (10-3) in four hours and 33 minutes – the longest match of the tournament so far. He became the second-oldest man to win a match at the Australian Open since it moved to Melbourne Park with a three-hour, 19-minute battle over Laslo Djere on Monday.
The Swiss, a three-time grand slam champion and former Australian Open winner, went the full distance, requiring a match tiebreak to defeat Gea on a raucous Kia Arena. According to Opta, it was the 49th five-set match of Wawrinka’s career at the grand slams, which moves him past compatriot Roger Federer for the most in the Open era.
He is also the oldest man to reach the third round of the Australian Open since the great Ken Rosewell in 1978, when he was 43.
“I’m exhausted!” Wawrinka told the crowd after his marathon effort. “As I told you, it’s my last Australian Open, so I’m trying to last as long as possible. Not only I have fun, but also you gave me so much energy. I’m not young anymore, so I need your energy. It’s an amazing feeling to be on this court, to have so much noise, so much support. I mean, I don’t know how I’m gonna recover, but I’m super happy.
“I’m always gonna fight. I’m always gonna leave everything on the court, always trying my best or trying to push myself and again, thank you so much for being here.”
Asked how he was going to recover for his third-round match, likely to be against ninth seed Taylor Fritz on Saturday, Wawrinka turned to an individual from the boisterous crowd and replied: “No idea, but I think at the beginning you drop a beer, so maybe I’m gonna pick up a beer.”
Wawrinka forced the fifth set with a trademark one-handed backhand winner down the line, a shot that had the Kia Arena on its feet after the former world No 3 found himself two sets to one down. In a wild fifth set, both players had multiple chances to break, while Gea required timeouts for medical treatment and to fix a broken shoe.
The drama continued into the fifth-set tiebreak as the 21-year-old Gea, making his Australian Open debut, began to cramp. After Wawrinka won a 21-shot rally to establish control of the tiebreak, Gea doubled-over in cramp before serving. Wawrinka then produced a miraculous lob from behind the baseline, which finally broke Gea’s resistance.
Wawrinka required a wildcard to enter the Australian Open main draw, with his ranking down at 139th in the world before the tournament.
