Three-time major champion Stan Wawrinka felt the love at the US Open after being given an emotional send-off following the final Grand Slam match of his career. <\/p>\n
The 41-year-old Swiss is retiring at the end of the season and looked close to tears as he received a rapturous reception after a straight-set defeat by Italy’s Matteo Berrettini.<\/p>\n
Wawrinka, who won the US Open in 2016, was initially overlooked by tournament organisers for a wildcard, but was given a last-minute reprieve following American recipient Patrick Kypson’s withdrawal.<\/p>\n
The belated decision can be considered well justified given the thousands who packed into the 8,000-capacity Grandstand court at Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n
Wawrinka made heart gestures with his fingers, and put his hand on his heart, at the end of an enjoyable contest to illustrate his appreciation.<\/p>\n
With huge cheers already ringing his ears, the former world number three encouraged the crowd to make more noise before knocking balls into the stands as souvenirs of the occasion.<\/p>\n
“One of the reasons I played until 41 was to live these moments,” said Wawrinka, who also won the Australian Open in 2014 and the French Open in 2015.<\/p>\n
“I’m very grateful for this wildcard. It was very important for me to finish here, where I won a Grand Slam 10 years ago. I want to thank you all for all these years.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three-time major champion Stan Wawrinka felt the love at the US Open after being given an emotional send-off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-756490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}