beat a hindered Rafael Nadal<\/a> in the Melbourne final.<\/p>\nThe Spaniard had hurt his back in the warm-up – but those who thought Wawrinka had got lucky and was unlikely to repeat the trick were soon reconsidering.<\/p>\n
After his Paris triumph, the final part of the trilogy came in New York in 2016, when Wawrinka again beat Djokovic from a set down to win the US Open.<\/p>\n
Just five minutes before the final, a tearful Wawrinka was shaking with nerves in the locker room, and he declared he was “completely empty” after the gruelling showpiece.<\/p>\n
He played 27 sets across that fortnight and spent 21 hours and 49 minutes on court, including saving a match point against Britain’s Dan Evans in the third round.<\/p>\n
He calmed his nerves, he said, by giving himself a blunt pep talk – a move typical of the man who inspired many GIFs with his trademark pointing of the finger towards his temple.<\/p>\n
Some players spurn alcohol during their careers. Wawrinka was not one of those, and may well not have been the same player had he tried to suppress a natural inclination to enjoy the company of others from time to time.<\/p>\n
“I think we are all different,” Wawrinka said, as he pointed out that Djokovic – who once denied himself even a square of chocolate for an 18-month period – is a 24-time Grand Slam champion and still playing at 39.<\/p>\n
“When you sacrifice so much for your tennis, when you do so much hard work to get there, I think if you like to celebrate, you should celebrate, and that’s what I did after winning Slams.<\/p>\n
“If you don’t celebrate after winning a Slam then you will never celebrate, because tennis never stops.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wawrinka will retire as a three-time Grand Slam champion, having won his first major at the 2014 Australian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-694109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694109","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=694109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}