Stan Wawrinka is expected to end his professional career at the end of this season.
We use the conditional because the former world number 3 has expressed tennis decidedly higher than expectations at the beginning of 2026, in which he has shown that he is still competitive at a high level and does not want to play a secondary role during his farewell tour.
The Swiss veteran honored the wild card that was granted to him by the organizers of the Australian Open in the best possible way, showing all his love for this sport and losing only to Taylor Fritz after putting him in serious difficulty.
If he continues to play like this, the three-time Grand Slam champion will have the chance to take some satisfaction before closing this wonderful chapter of his life. He also reached the third round at the Rotterdam ATP 500 last week, where he was forced to surrender to Australian ace Alex de Minaur (who lifted the trophy at the end of the week).
Wawrinka reflects on his career
'Stanimal' has had a truly sensational career, with peaks that have allowed him to win the same number of Major titles as Andy Murray and beat the Big 3 multiple times. He would certainly have won more major titles without Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, but he never had the regret of playing in the best era of all time.
In a recent conversation with Diede de Groot, Wawrinka reflected on his long career and revealed what he will miss about tennis: “I started when I was 8 years old, just as a kid who wanted to play tennis and it quickly became a passion.
The sport is an amazing school of life in general and the emotion you get from the sports. For me, that’s what I’m going to miss the most because there will be no place where I can find it. So all these aspects for me is going to be it’s going to be tough to not have it anymore.”
