Thursday night and there was Stan Wawrinka, 40, peeling off one single-handed backhand after another to defeat a rival young enough to be his son. France’s Arthur Gea, 21, wilted with cramps in the fifth-set tiebreaker. Stan looked fresh as an Edelweiss. He jokingly promised the crowd he would share a beer with them. And that backhand, what a thing of beauty.

Wawrinka’s dad is a social worker and his mum is a biodynamic farmer. He grew up on the farm they run with a staff of people with intellectual disabilities and drug and alcohol addictions. A late maturer, he won three grand slam tournaments including the Australian Open in 2014, beating Novak Djokovic in the quarters and Rafael Nadal in the final.

His persistence in 2026 is a reminder that the great rivalries in tennis aren’t isolated duels; their greatness depends on what lies beneath, who constitutes the next level down, who the greats have to beat before they get to the top.

Will the Carlos Alcaraz-Jannik Sinner rivalry in men’s tennis ever put the hook in fans the way previous rivalries did? It’s too soon to tell and maybe too old and crusty to ask, but so far all it has going for it is sheer excellence, tennis raised to the highest level, and that’s not enough.

A great rivalry needs more than just two weeks of everyone waiting to see another Alcasinner final. Amazing – there’s no other word – as those matches have been, a grand slam needs more turns and surprises on the way there.

Between 2003 and 2023, the Djokovic-Rafael Nadal-Roger Federer cartel won 66 of 81 grand slam finals,........

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