Woodbridge: Wawrinka on the cusp of greatness

It’s incredible to think that Stan Wawrinka is one major away from achieving a career Grand Slam.

Here’s a guy who has flown under the radar for much of his career, and now has a chance to win four Majors on all surfaces – something that only a handful of other players have done (Djokovic, Nadal, Federer and Agassi). It would be an extraordinary achievement, and something that few people would have predicted a couple of years ago.

How’s he going to do it? He’s never been past the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, and lost in the second round there last year.

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Things need to change if that’s going to happen.

He and Magnus Norman have a fantastic coaching relationship – strong enough to bring in Paul Annacone as a tutor / mentor that can change the way he constructs points on the grass. He needs this if he wants to have a chance of winning a Wimbledon title.

As a ball striker, Stan is one of the cleanest that has ever played. But he plays hard court, generalised tennis. Annacone can help him to become a grass court player.

That doesn’t just mean serve-volleying.

You can build momentum on grass quickly with point structure, which helps to build pressure within the match. You can do this in a number of ways: by utilising the slice backhand into the correct parts of the court; by playing the correct angles you can move forward to finish points with easier volleys at net; and on serve, utilising the slick, lower bounce of the grass with the slice serve.

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Paul Annacone will bring patterns of play to his grass court game that we haven’t seen before. I think that could make a big difference to his chance of success.

As a grass court mentor, Annacone might not go in and work with Stan directly, he would work primarily with Magnus. He would talk to him about how to construct points. In that way, Magnus is the conduit to get that information to Wawrinka – Annacone is in effect coaching the coach.

That said, I would be surprised if Stan became Wimbledon champion this year. I do think that the addition of Annacone might show him that if he had done this a few years earlier he could have gone further than he has done before.

If he does manage to do it, it should elevate him into the pantheon of greats. Whether it will remains to be seen, because there lies Stan’s biggest problem: he will always be the second best player from Switzerland. It would, however, give Switzerland two of the most complete players to ever play the game.