{"id":6303,"date":"2026-01-19T16:54:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=6303"},"modified":"2026-01-19T16:54:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:54:56","slug":"australian-open-2026-stan-wawrinka-40-and-marin-cilic-roll-back-years-to-advance-in-melbourne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=6303","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026: Stan Wawrinka, 40, and Marin Cilic roll back years to advance in Melbourne"},"content":{"rendered":"


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For Wawrinka, Monday’s victory was his first at a Grand Slam since Wimbledon in 2024 and his first at the Australian Open for five years.<\/p>\n

At 40 years and 296 days, Wawrinka is the second oldest player to win a men’s singles match at Melbourne Park, bettered only by Ivo Karlovic (40 years and 326 days) in 2020.<\/p>\n

But although he is bringing the curtain down on his “long journey” in professional tennis, Wawrinka made it clear that he is not in Melbourne just to say goodbye.<\/p>\n

“It is my last year. The passion is still intact but I’m not young any more,” he said. <\/p>\n

“Today was amazing, it’s so special for me to enter the court and enter a Grand Slam. <\/p>\n

“It’s the reason I practise hard with my team every off-season and every day, to have a chance to compete with the best players in the world.<\/p>\n

“I’m a competitor so I’m always going to fight. Hopefully I’m going to play another good match.”<\/p>\n

World number 139 Wawrinka, having received vocal support throughout the match, celebrated by pointing to all four corners of the Show Court Arena to encourage even more noise.<\/p>\n

“Only at the end of the match, I started to think a little bit and I got too much emotion about maybe what could happen,” Wawrinka added.<\/p>\n

“It was a big battle and I’m happy to win.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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For Wawrinka, Monday’s victory was his first at a Grand Slam since Wimbledon in 2024 and his first at the Australian Open for five years. At 40 years and 296 days, Wawrinka is the second oldest player to win a men’s singles match at Melbourne Park, bettered only by Ivo Karlovic (40 years and 326<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}