#365DaysOfWriting – Day 128
The US Open 2016 was won by a Swiss man and a German woman
It’s not Roger Federer. And the last German woman to win a US Open was Steffi Graf, way back in 1996 (and my first official lady crush).
The winners of this season? The ‘other’ Swiss, Stanislas Wawrinka. And the ‘new’ German, Angelique Kerber.
Stan the Man isn’t the OTHER Swiss any more.
For years he stayed under the shadow of The Great One, The One With The Glorious Backhand. Not any more. Stan the Man has reached 3 Grand Slam finals, and won all of them. The only one that’s eluded him is the Wimbledon – he’s only gone as far as the quarter-finals there. But IF he reaches a Wimbledon final, who knows…?
Let’s have a look at the head-to-head between Djokovic and Wawrinka, shall we?
Assuming Djoker is his biggest threat to completing the Grand Slam.
On the surface, it seems Djoker holds all the aces against Wawrinka: a 19–5 record.
Dig a little deeper though – in Wawrinka’s 5 wins, 2 have come in Grand Slam finals, and one in a Grand Slam quarter-final.
What can we draw from this? That Wawrinka may not have beaten him often, but has beaten him when it counts. He only needs to overcome his weakness on grass (easier said than done – ask Goran Ivanisevic). Call me foolhardy, but I’m putting my money on Stan the Man for Wimbledon 2017.
Let’s move on to Angelique Kerber.
She’s already proven to be a good match for Serena. Again in the overall head-to-head, Serena leads 6–2, but Kerber beat her in the Australian Open final this year, and beat an opponent who beat Serena (Karolina Pliskova) in the final of the US Open. She did lose the Wimbledon final to Serena though. But Kerber is World No. 1 at the moment. Have Germany finally found their great tennis player of this era? It is a country that produced Michael Stich, Boris Becker and Steffi Graf, after all. It’s too early to tell for Kerber, but she has made a stellar start to her career.
