Stanislas Wawrinka the Un-stereo Type

Many Tennis Commentators Have Already Begun Talking About the Fab Five, by Straight Away Including Stanislas Wawrinka in the Mix...

 

- Niji Ng

He had to live in the shadow of four great players – some of them are the best ever players the game has ever seen. The fans and the media labeled them Fab Four. The Fab Four could anything on the field. But he did not follow them. He wrote his own rules and kept on producing sparkling performances. Once he began to overshadow the Fab Four, the world started to talk about the Fab Five. He never thought about such labels and happily smashed the ball.

That man, in case you have not figured out yet, is none other than Virender Sehwag. He may be producing smashing hits on Twitter these days. When he started out playing, he was eclipsed by the Fab Four of Indian cricket: Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Saurav Ganguly. Sehwag was known initially as the poor man’s Tendulkar or the Sachin without the footwork. He never moved his feet much. He just watched the ball and hit it. But he scored enough runs and won enough matches for India to earn a place for himself in the Indian cricket history.

His story is now being repeated across another sport: tennis. Stanislas Wawrinka won his third grand slam earlier in September by beating the world number one Novak Djokovic. His other two grand slam titles are the Australian Open in 2014 and the French Open in 2015. He is just a Wimbledon triumph away from a career grand slam – something only four players have achieved in the open-era history of tennis.

THE FAB FOUR BUSINESS

You must have heard a lot about the Fab Four of men’s tennis: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Djokovic and Andy Murray. Among them, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have achieved the career grand slam. Murray has the same number of grand slam crowns as Wawrinka has: three. What is preventing Wawrinka from being drafted into this elite club, then? Nothing, in fact; only that there is no such Fab Four club at the moment.