Wawrinka's Lyon Run Ends Against Cobolli, and Only Basel Is Left

Stan Wawrinka has one tournament left. The 41-year-old Swiss lost 6-2, 6-4 to top seed Flavio Cobolli in the round of 16 in Lyon on Thursday, less than a day after he had produced the win that made this week feel like a farewell with a pulse. Lyon was the penultimate stop of his career. Basel, at home, is the last one.

What happened in the Cobolli match?

Cobolli took control early and did not give it back. TennisTemple reports the Italian, ranked No. 6 in the world, won 87 percent of points behind his first serve and converted three of his four break points, closing the match in straight sets. LaPresse carries the same 6-2, 6-4 score and the same reading of the match, an excellent performance from the top seed. Context matters here. Wawrinka had spent two hours and 46 minutes on court the day before, and Cobolli arrived fresh, on a three-match losing run of his own that included two first-round exits in Asia, per TennisTemple. A tired 41-year-old against a top-10 player chasing an ATP Finals place was the hardest draw the week could have produced, and the score reflects that rather than any collapse from Wawrinka.

Why did Wednesday night matter more than Thursday?

Because Wednesday was the win he had been waiting five months for. Wawrinka beat 20-year-old Martin Landaluce 6-3, 6-7(2), 7-6(5) on Wednesday, his first ATP Tour win since the Geneva Open in May, EssentiallySports reports. He had three match points in the decider and could not take any of them, then trailed 3-0 in the tiebreak before winning it 7-5. It was the kind of match his whole final season has threatened without delivering: his record this year is 7-17, per EssentiallySports, with 13 tiebreaks played and only four won. On Wednesday the tiebreak finally went his way, at home in all but country, in front of a French crowd that had already given him a tribute at Roland Garros a few months ago, TennisTemple notes. Farewells in this sport are usually managed. This one had to be won, which is also the story in Brussels this week, where David Goffin postponed his own retirement with a comeback before his singles career ended a day later.

What did he say when the age gap came up?

He shut it down with a laugh. After the Landaluce win, on-court interviewer Marc Maury pointed out the 21-year age gap between the two players, and Wawrinka answered, in EssentiallySports’ account: “You don’t have to repeat that, not with every question.” He went on, more seriously, that at 41 it is becoming increasingly difficult, which is also why he is retiring at the end of the year, and that he tries to push his limits and wanted to feel good on court for the last two tournaments of his career. It is a fair summary of the whole farewell. The gap is real, he knows the numbers better than the interviewer does, and the point of the last two weeks is not the gap. It is the one-handed backhand that is about to leave the tour with him, a shot our guide to hitting a tennis backhand treats as a technique and his generation treated as a weapon.

How long has Wawrinka been doing this?

Long enough to have played his Lyon opponent’s father. TennisHead, via Yardbarker, records that Wawrinka faced Stefano Cobolli at a Challenger in Brindisi in 2003, when Wawrinka was 18 and starting out on the lower circuit. Stefano won that match in three sets. Twenty-three years later Stefano is Flavio’s coach, and Flavio has now beaten Wawrinka in all three of their meetings, in Shanghai in 2024, at the United Cup in January and now in Lyon, the first two in tight three-set matches and this one in straight sets. That span is the career in one fact: a player who turned professional when his current opponent was a small child, and who was still taking a set off top players and winning tiebreaks against 20-year-olds in his final month. Few farewells come with a receipt that clear, and few players get to test themselves against two generations of the same family on the way out, the way Terence Atmane has been tested in Almaty this week in a very different kind of week.

What is left of the farewell now?

Basel, and then a goodbye at home. Wawrinka said goodbye to the French public in Lyon, TennisTemple reports, and next week he plays the Swiss Indoors in Basel, the ATP 500 in his own country, where he will hang up his rackets. The career he brings there holds three Grand Slam titles, the Australian Open in 2014, the French Open in 2015 and the US Open in 2016, with finals won against Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, and a peak ranking of No. 3. EssentiallySports adds one more date after Basel: December 19 in Geneva, an exhibition called One Last Backhand, with Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Gael Monfils alongside him. The competitive ending is Basel, though, and its shape is already set. He will walk on as the home favourite, every match could be his last, and the draw will not care. Lyon showed he can still win one of those matches. It also showed, 24 hours later, what the second one costs, on a day when Elena Rybakina’s return in Ningbo lasted 30 minutes at the other end of a career.

What should readers watch in Basel?

His first match, because in a farewell week the first match is the whole event until he wins it. If Wawrinka wins in Basel, the week grows and the ceremony waits. If he loses, the ceremony is the week, and Swiss tennis closes a chapter that started in 2003. Either way, Lyon has already supplied the image the farewell needed: a 41-year-old, down 3-0 in a deciding tiebreak against a man half his age, refusing to leave on that point, and then telling the interviewer, with a smile, that he did not need the age gap repeated back to him.