Stanislas Wawrinka is that rare sporting beast: a champion with an ego disproportionate to his talent. Who could not warm to a man who moments after beating the best tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, brings his much derided plaid shorts to the winner’s press conference, drapes them over the desk in front of him, and says: “It will be in the museum of Roland Garros. You will see my shorts every day if you want. Everybody talks about the shorts. I quite like them. Apparently I’m the only one.”
Well, perhaps Magnus Norman likes them too. There is not much coach and player disagree about, from training techniques, to life views to maybe the worst shorts ever to dress a grand slam champion since the hotpants that housed John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg.
The Swede, who has guided Wawrinka to two slam titles in their short time together, after the Swiss had toiled through 36 majors without even making the semi-finals, is, according to his decorated compatriot Mats Wilander, “the best coach in the world”.
Norman is uncomfortable with such accolades, preferring to transfer the praise to the player for the way he has changed his attitude and philosophy on tennis. And there were things worth changing. Stan the Man was always the most sociable of athletes, once as devoted to downing a few beers with journalists (a very long night in New York lives in the memory) as he was on Sunday to ripping his glorious one-handed backhand down the line to beat Djokovic 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 in three hours and 12 minutes, and, at 30, becoming the oldest male champion at Roland Garros since Andrés Gomez 25 years ago.
But history did not just come to him; he made it himself, with a lot of hard work and, under Norman, growing self-belief. A year ago, he was beaten in the first round of the French and they had a late-night hamburger in a Paris McDonald’s without interruption. Those days and nights are gone. “Everyone told me when I started working with Stan that he was a little bit soft and he was not the man for the big occasion,” Norman said. “In the two years we have been together, he has been rock solid in all the big matches so I am not surprised that [he beat Djokovic].”
Norman, who reached No2 in the world and was a losing Roland Garros finalist against Gustavo Kuerten in 2000 before retiring in 2004 because of hip and knee injuries, saw how that new resolve helped Wawrinka in the final set, after Djokovic had gone to 3-0 and looked like levelling the match. It was in this vital closing stretch that the coach saw why Wawrinka later described it as, “the greatest game of my life”.
It was, he agreed, his best performance, because of the context and the opponent. “Towards the end I could see that he was starting to get a little bit tired. So, on a big occasion like this against the world No1, I would say yes.” Norman’s record with Wawrinka is phenomenal. To win his first slam, in Melbourne 18 months ago, he had to beat Djokovic in the quarter-finals and an admittedly wounded Rafael Nadal in the final – but he did it when, in lesser tournaments, he was underperforming on a regular basis.
That is why Wilander regards him as the best coach in tennis, although Norman replied: “I think that is not true at all.” He paid tribute to all Wawrinka’s coaches before him, which was taking dignified self-deprecation a bit far perhaps. Norman has turned the player’s career around at a point where it often looked like Wawrinka would drift into the sidings, forever the second-best Swiss.
But he beat Roger Federer so emphatically in the quarters in Paris that even that judgment must be updated; right now, Wawrinka is playing more lights-out tennis than the man with 17 slam titles to his name and there is reason to believe he will not change on the grass of Wimbledon.
Norman advises caution, though. “Now we have to calm down a bit,” he says. “He has got the game, but he is still not as consistent as the top-four guys. He is losing sometimes a bit early in the Masters series. This was one win, but the year is long. He has more to prove to be able to be a contender.”
Norman admits there was no point during the first six matches when he thought Wawrinka could win the title. “Not really. Going into the tournament I felt really good because he has been doing really well ever since Monte Carlo [in April, when he could take only three games off Grigor Dimitrov, then announced the break-up of his marriage, which preceded a poor run of form all the way to the French].
“Every day he has been putting in the work and every day I have been really happy when I have gone to bed. But, going into the tournament, I felt that if he could get through the first couple of rounds he was going to be dangerous and a contender. But I never believed it until maybe the first match point [against Djokovic]. It was, like: ‘Now he has a chance to win it.’”
How did he turn his tennis around, given the turmoil of his personal life and his poor form? “That’s also why he is a very interesting player to watch,” says Norman, “because you never know what to expect. This week we saw the greatness of Stan but next week it could be something else. This is my job: to try to make him a little bit more consistent. If he wants to break into the top four [which he has done again on Monday, jumping five places] and to do well, he has to be more consistent, week in, week out.”
Wawrinka’s tennis is uncomplicated, transparent even: hit the ball hard and early. Norman has told him: “Be aggressive. Take every opportunity, every short ball – you have to go for it. Try to serve well and go get the match.”
Perhaps Wawrinka has delivered on that simple philosophy because his game is so basic and uncomplicated, the single-handed backhand a weapon of beauty rather than a relic. There are fewer moving parts to worry about, just the racket and the ball and the guy on the other side of the net. As clear a thinker as Norman is, he had to pause before answering one last question. Is Wawrinka at his best better than Djokovic at his best? “That’s a very tough question. Novak is No1 in the world, so he is more consistent over 12 months. I think we all know that, if Stan has a good day, he can beat anybody. Over 12 months, I think Novak is outstanding.”
With those sort of diplomatic skills, Norman might almost be Swiss.