Tennis is saying goodbye to Stan Wawrinka, the Swiss player who spent his career among the sport's biggest names and still managed to win three Grand Slam titles of his own.
A Grand Slam is one of the four major tournaments of the year: the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. They carry the most prestige and ranking points in the game. Wawrinka won three of them, at the Australian Open in 2014, the French Open in 2015 and the US Open in 2016.
The late arrival
Wawrinka was 28 when he won his first major, an age when many players are winding down. He had long been overshadowed by his compatriot Roger Federer, and the two were Olympic doubles gold medallists at Beijing in 2008. They also played together in Switzerland's Davis Cup triumph in 2014, the team competition that sits alongside the main tour.
His rise came in a period dominated by Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, often called the Big Four. Between them they took the vast majority of the sport's major trophies for years. Breaking into that group was rare, and Wawrinka did it more than once.
The finals
He reached three Grand Slam finals and won all three. In Melbourne in 2014 he beat Nadal. In Paris in 2015 and New York in 2016 he beat Djokovic.
Winning a major is a demanding task. A men's Grand Slam draw starts with 128 players in a knockout format, so a champion must win seven matches in a row. Each match is played over the best of five sets, meaning a player needs to win three sets to take it. Matches can last several hours, and the whole event stretches over two weeks. Beating the top-ranked players along the way, often in the final rounds, requires both stamina and nerve.
Stepping away
Unlike in many team sports, retirement in tennis follows no set procedure. Players are independent competitors who choose which tournaments to enter, so stepping away usually means announcing a final season or a last event and then ceasing to play on the tour. Many use that time to appear one last time at tournaments that defined their careers. For Wawrinka, that career will be remembered for three finals reached and three won, against some of the best players the sport has seen.
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