Stan Wawrinka’s title defense at Roland Garros got off to a rough start against Lukas Rosol, but he appears to have picked up the pace in time for fourth-round action on Monday. Wawrinka will battle Viktor Troicki for a quarterfinal spot. Adam Leigh previews the match.
Stan Wawrinka’s defense of his French Open title is on track through three rounds. His next challenge is a fourth-round matchup on Sunday with Viktor Troicki, to whom he has dropped just a set to in four previous wins.
Wawrinka labored to a five-set victory over Lukas Rosol in the opening round but has since enjoyed routine straight-set defeats of Taro Daniel and Jeremy Chardy. Troicki, it could be argued, has been somewhat more fortunate on his passage to the last 16. He earned a hard-fought, five-set win over Grigor Dimitrov in his opener before benefiting from a third-set retirement by countryman Dusan Lajovic and a clearly fatigued Gilles Simon, whom he accounted for in three uncompetitive sets.
Despite playing plenty of his tennis on clay, Troicki isn’t truly at home on the dirt. The Serb prefers quicker surfaces on which he can set his feet and get full rotation through his big forehand; on slower tracks he doesn’t have that luxury. This spells all sorts or trouble against Wawrinka, who generates terrific power without needing the same time to get through his strokes. The Swiss is also unafraid to consistently tee off on his shots, which severely challenges Troicki’s defensive capabilities. Although the courts at Roland Garros are playing a little quicker this year, it won’t be anywhere near enough to make a difference.
Wawrinka isn’t playing as well as he was when he lifted La Coupe des Mousquetaires a year ago, but he has far too many advantages over Troicki to see his defense falter here.
Pick: Wawrinka in 3
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Definitely Stan the man… I think he is getting better and better which is dangerous for anyone on the other side of the net… Stan in three
WaWa has picked up his pace. A lot. Troicki is flaky.
Stan in 3
Could be in for another afternoon of rain delays. Heavy showers and thunderstorms forecast for Paris.
AVR putting up a valiant fight against Raonic. He’s up a set and just broken Milos and will be serving for the 2nd set.
Hope they can get through the match before the rain arrives. A rain delay will favour Raonic.
AVR now in the lead 2:0
wawa down a break in second. get a move on stanimal…
stan breaks back.
stan is such a strange mixture of good and bad sometimes..
gr8 time for a double fault stan..
victor had 3 set points…
what a miss by stan..
another miss..same as before why not play another shot to rally…
set to victor
stan was like this earlier on in the tourney. going for broke on his second shot. i don’t know why he can’t play the percentages sometimes and play rallying shots…he gives away a lot of free points
Agreed , Amy! That was rather stupid from him.
he was doing this so much earlier in the tourney vr. he just gives away control….
it’s rather ironic the way stan points at his head after these matches. his brain has not been his strong point recently.
WaWa thought he was going to control this match relatively easily. Came as a surprise Troicki didn’t fold. Expecting him to get his act together now.
Bet Guy Forget is hoping there will be no more carnage amongst the seeded players!! He needs a decent line up for the SFs and Final to keep the TV channels happy after losing the main attractions.
well if troicki were to win either he or what’s his name would be in the semis after a dud quarter. that would be the pits as j-mac would say…
needless to say this rg is already the pits without rafa…
hahahaha british tv saying let’s go over to hear the ovation for andy when he comes on court. we dutifully tootle over and there is as many boos as cheers!!!
we’ve beaten a swift retreat now…
commies say it must be some americans in the crowd!! haha!
Haha. I’ve heard that excuse before.
The French love Andy lol.
How damn good has stan’s CC forehand become over the last 2-3 years! He finds such a sharp angle on it and then BOOM down-the-line forehand.
he’s missed loads of down the line forehands today though vr…
Yes Amy, he sends them long… needs to find better control if he is to against Murray and Djokovic
A lot of us here laughed at Henman’s pick but Stan may well end up winning the French Open. It is a long way to go but he has got the capability.
The only player whom I believe will convincingly beat Stan no matter how well stan is playing is Nadal. Stan can blow others off the court.
agree vr. rafa is the player most likely to beat stan. also i reckon he could take murray to the cleaners with his forehand.
Yeah that’s happened in the USO 2013 Qtr finals.
Stan’s second serve is also one of the best among the top guys so he doesn’t let nole attack …we know’s Murray has that weakness…
Nole has the advantage of being more consistent but Stan has the firepower and he has shown to be consistent against Nole in slam matches.
Regarding Rafa, he is actually able to impose himself over stan by using his forehand CC..stan is on the backfoot against an aggressive Rafa
do you think stan has improved his ability to deal with rafa’s forehand topspin when it kicks up on his backhand?
Well I don’t think Rafa would convincingly beat (if beat) Stan if he was playing well. Yes if he’s playing badly Rafa wins like in Monte Carlo this year but like last year in Rome Stan beat him and he has played well and lost like 7-6 7-6 to Rafa a few times in 2013 and 2014 so if they had played in the finals and Rafa hadn’t been injured I don’t think a blowout would’ve happened at all considering Stan brings his best to the biggest matches.
wish Stan were in Novak’s half …haha