“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.”
— Samuel Beckett
The quote tattooed in blue on Stanislas Wawrinka’s left forearm was a fitting one. For the second straight year he lost at the U.S. Open to Novak Djokovic, but rarely has anyone played so well in defeat, or gained so much respect in failure.
Wawrinka walked off the court during last year’s three-set rout after getting ill. This time, in the men’s semifinal Saturday, he walked off to a standing ovation after pushing the world’s top player to the limit. But a strained right thigh in the fourth set and a 21-minute game in the fifth proved just too much, as Djokovic pulled out a 2-6, 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 thriller.
“Unfortunately I was a little bit struggling physically,’’ Warwinka said. “That’s a completely different match than the match we played in the Australian Open, [when] I had to play my best game to stay with him. Today I had the feeling when I was still fit, when I was still healthy, I had the match in control. I think I was playing better than him, doing much more things than him.
“But he’s not No. 1 for nothing … I had to find everything I had in my body today to stay with him, and he won the match.’’
Djokovic knocked Wawrinka out of last year’s Australian Open with a 1-6, 7-5, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 12-10 win, and when they met in the fourth round of last year’s U.S. Open, he led 6-4, 6-1 and broke Wawrinka in the third set when the latter called the doctor and trainer onto the court. Wawrinka appeared dizzy and played just one more game before offering his hand, down 3-1.
But just like the Beckett quote Wawrinka lives by, he rebounded from those failures and got better. And Despite the thigh injury he had suffered in last Sunday’s victory over Marco Baghdatis, Wawrinka drilled Djokovic in the first set and took the third.
But after feeling his thigh flare up after the third set, then being broken and falling behind 2-0 in the fourth, he called for a medical timeout to get it taped.
Serving with the fifth set tied 1-1, Wawrinka had eight game points while Djokovic had five chances to break. Before the pivotal point, Wawrinka waved his arms to pump up the crowd, then hit a 123 mph service winner to hold. But after that 30-point game, the physically-spent Wawrinka didn’t win another.
“I was already quite dead physically,’’ Wawrinka said. “I was just trying to stay with him and to fight and to give everything that I had in my body. But it was a tough, tough fifth set for sure.’’
But Wawrinka was tough enough t that the crowd gave him a standing ovation, and Djokovic acknowledged he had been outplayed.
At least Wawrinka failed better.