Former Australian Open champion Stanislas Wawrinka is unsure whether he will receive a wildcard for what would be his final appearance at Melbourne Park before retiring at the end of 2026.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old Swiss, who \u200blifted the Australian Open trophy in 2014, announced last month he would hang up his racket at the end of 2026, bringing a \u200c24-year professional career to a close.<\/p>\n
Now ranked 157th in the world, he \u200cno longer qualifies automatically for Grand Slam draws and will require a wildcard to enter.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know, actually. For me, I’m taking week after week,” Wawrinka<\/a> said on Sunday when asked about the prospect of \u2060receiving an Australian Open wildcard at the United Cup.<\/p>\n “When I receive good \u200cnews, like I did for playing here and the wildcard for Auckland, \u200bI’m super happy. I’m super happy when I receive one. When I don’t receive, that’s all good, I’m going to go for the next tournament.”<\/p>\n Wawrinka needed a wildcard for last year’s tournament but fell in the first round for the third \u200dconsecutive year.<\/p>\n Australian Open organisers \u200chave yet to announce the complete list of wildcard recipients for the tournament beginning January 18.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, they handed 45-year-old Venus Williams<\/a> a wildcard as she prepares to become the oldest woman \u2060to feature in the main draw.<\/p>\n Wawrinka’s United Cup Swiss teammates believe his inclusion should be automatic, with Luca Castelnuovo saying it was a “no-brainer” while Belinda Bencic<\/a> was even more emphatic.<\/p>\n “It’s not even a question. I don’t know what they’re waiting for,” Bencic said.<\/p>\n On his part, Wawrinka has already logged over six hours on court in two matches in a tough start to the year, beating Frenchman Arthur Rinderknech<\/a> in three sets but losing to Italy’s Flavio Cobolli<\/a> in another three-setter on Sunday<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It’s my last year, so \u2060I need to spend the maximum of time on the \u200ccourt, so I make sure that happens in every match,” he joked.<\/p>\n “In general I’m quite happy with my level. Of course, I would have loved to win it.<\/p>\n “For me, I have two days in a row, two big matches. I \u2060can see that physically I’m good. I’m feeling good \u200bat the beginning of the year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Australian Open champion Stanislas Wawrinka is unsure whether he will receive a wildcard for what would be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-389503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}