Wawrinka fended off Fritz to begin the second, then broke in a two-game swing often seen in tennis.<\/p>\n
He lured Fritz forward with drop shots, drilled one-handed backhands and crushed a forehand down the line at 5-2.<\/p>\n
Last year in Melbourne, Fritz lost to another veteran, Gael Monfils, in the same round. Was lightning about to strike twice?<\/p>\n
The start of the third mirrored the start of the match. Quick holds were the norm. Fritz tweaked his first-serve return stance at 3-3 and it paid instant dividends, earning a break. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Once Wawrinka took the medical timeout, there seemed no way back.<\/p>\n
Yet Wawrinka offered a smile when getting the better of Fritz in the fifth game. Another one came and prompted one of the loudest roars of the evening after a rocketed one-handed backhand in the last game saw Fritz trail 15-30.<\/p>\n
But out came two mammoth serves and a huge forehand to fend off the danger.<\/p>\n
The pair, who practised together at the United Cup, had a quick chat up at the net. The gracious Fritz then let Wawrinka take it all in.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t blame anyone in the crowd for cheering for Stan here,\u201d said Fritz.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing what he\u2019s out here doing. I have so much respect for the passion and the drive it takes to be doing what he\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wawrinka fended off Fritz to begin the second, then broke in a two-game swing often seen in tennis.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-434649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}