{"id":329470,"date":"2026-08-25T18:56:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T18:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/329470\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T18:56:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T18:56:22","slug":"stan-wawrinka-pays-tribute-to-u-s-open-and-new-york-after-not-receiving-wild-card-in-final-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/329470\/","title":{"rendered":"Stan Wawrinka pays tribute to U.S. Open and New York after not receiving wild card in final season"},"content":{"rendered":"

2016 U.S. Open<\/a> champion Stan Wawrinka<\/a> has paid tribute to New York, after his missing out on a wild card<\/a> ended his hopes of playing one final Grand Slam before retiring at the end of the season.<\/p>\n

Wawrinka, 41, did not enter this week\u2019s qualifying tournament. He posted a message to Instagram Tuesday, reflecting on his changing relationship with the city and tournament after missing out on a place in the main draw.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Open is the only Grand Slam not to have offered Wawrinka a wild card during his 2026 farewell season. The 2014 Australian Open champion was invited back to Melbourne, Wimbledon awarded him a place in its main draw and Roland Garros initially gave its 2015 champion a wild card before Lorenzo Musetti\u2019s withdrawal allowed him to enter directly.<\/p>\n

Wawrinka publicly confirmed last month that he had requested a main-draw wild card and hoped to play at Flushing Meadows for the final time. He announced in December that 2026 would be his final season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first arrived in New York from a small farming village in Switzerland, everything felt too big,\u201d Wawrinka wrote. \u201cBut year after year New York slowly became one of my favorite places in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWinning the U.S. Open, in the city that never sleeps, will forever be one of the greatest moments of my life,\u201d he added, signing off: \u201cForever grateful. Forever New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is the second consecutive year Wawrinka has missed out on a U.S. Open wild card after receiving one in 2024. His coach, Magnus Norman, said they had hoped for an invitation in 2025, a year after the USTA awarded Wawrinka and retiring 2020 champion Dominic Thiem main-draw wild cards.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s eight men\u2019s wild cards went to six Americans, Frenchman Ga\u00ebl Monfils and Australia\u2019s Dane Sweeny. Monfils, who is also retiring at the end of the season, received the French Tennis Federation\u2019s reciprocal wild card \u2014 an agreement that a French player receives a place at the US Open in exchange for an American receiving one at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n

The last male player to receive a non-reciprocal wild card for this year\u2019s event was American world No. 116 Patrick Kypson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sweeny received his place through the equivalent agreement with Tennis Australia, after Alexei Popyrin, the initial recipient, got into the main draw under his own power following withdrawals.<\/p>\n

Wawrinka reached a career-high ranking of world No. 3 and won three Grand Slam singles titles, beating the world No. 1 in each final, including recovering from a set down to defeat Novak Djokovic in four sets in New York.<\/p>\n

He also reached the U.S. Open semifinals in 2013 and 2015 and three further quarterfinals, while his first-round defeat by Matteo Berrettini at Wimbledon in June will now stand as the final Grand Slam match of his career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2016 U.S. Open champion Stan Wawrinka has paid tribute to New York, after his missing out on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,15547],"class_list":["post-329470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}