Stan: slang for someone who is a very zealous fan, especially of a celebrity or music group. Stan can also be a verb for liking something a great deal.
It would be easy to stan for Roger Federer, Arthur Ashe, or (gasp) Jimmy Connors. That’s why I don’t.
I stan for two Stans: Stan Smith and Stan Wawrinka.
I’m not trying to be cute or funny. I mean this.
I was quite the tennis fan from the early ‘70s to the early 80s. Until 1978 the US Open (as it was named after 1968, I think it was called “the Nationals” before then) was held in the West Side Tennis Club, in a section of Queens called Forest Hills. In fact, the tournament was referred to eponymously as “Forest Hills” and sometimes oldsters still call the US Open “Forest Hills,” the way old folks used to call the refrigerator the “icebox” when I was a kid.
It was moved to a specially built tennis center for various reasons, good and bad. In the early 70s, the tournament was a low-key, but festive and civilized event in a pretty area:
I bet most of you don’t even know that the sneaker man Stan Smith was—actually, is—a real man. Very real! The two most memorable players among many of that era were, to me, Stan Smith and John Newcombe. Nationalism be damned, I was a huge Newk fan.
I was put off by everything about Smith. In those days, tall blond perfect WASPs who never showed emotions on the court were aliens. Bland and boring. A serviceman during Vietnam. White bread.
And that name! Stan Smith? Even then, I thought he was a manufactured product. Now people who don’t know he ever lived think he’s a manufactured product. The irony.
That’s all over. I can now acknowledge the essential wonderfulness of Stan Smith. Married to the same lovely lady for half a century, father of four sane children whom he didn’t push into professional tennis (they all played in college) grandfather of many, all-around gentleman.
But there’s more. In reading about him, I learned, or rather relearned, that there was another side to Mr. Smith. He was a founder of the Association of Tennis Professionals, the men’s tennis players union.
To listen to the media, you’d think that 1973 was all about women’s tennis. No—the whole sport was in flux. (Actually, all sports were, see link below about baseball.) Finally, the players were saying: we’re the talent. Stop the bullshit, stop pushing us around, stop telling us where we can compete.
The greatest player in the game, Rod Laver, was shut out of sanctioned tournaments for five years, depriving him of the opportunity to burnish his record as players do today.1
And in this revolution there was no bigger team player than dull, boring white bread Corporal Stan Smith. True, Lieutenant Ashe was more of a leader but leaders need teams and without Wimbledon champ Corporal Smith rounding out the team, who knows what might have happened?
Smith forfeited his chance to defend his 1972 Wimbledon crown to participate in the men’s boycott of Wimbledon in 19732 Moreover, he was a mainstay of Davis Cup3 when that meant something. Back then players had to devote a significant amount of time to Davis Cup without remuneration. All for national glory. All did it willingly.4 And Stan was a great doubles player. The ultimate team player.
What a difference a generation (or two) makes. I now adore Stan Smith for all the reasons I disliked him (or thought I did) back when. He’s a pillar of rectitude, a pro, a solid teammate—
a STANd-up guy.
For these reasons, I stan for Stan Smith.
Mr. Wawrinka is a different matter.
I attended the US Open’s free to the public fan appreciation week, which takes place the week before the actual open, twice. You can see the qualification matches and the participant players practice. The tennis center has two stadiums (Ashe—large and one Armstrong—smaller), a grandstand, and multiple outer courts. They tend to put the top seeds/big stars in the Ashe Stadium, but you can see some top players in the grandstand and outer courts up close and personal. Djokovic got a rousing hero’s welcome in the Ashe Stadium, so I saw him at a distance. Vondrousova, the women’s Wimbledon champ, was relegated to an outer court and I saw her practice not 20 feet away.
The moment I saw a picture of Stan the Man’s one-handed backhand, I fell in love and I had to see him practice. These pics are from the practice session I attended on August 23rd. Stan was practicing with another one-hander and former top ten player, Dominic Thiem, in the grandstand, but we were all there just to look at THIS:
Plenty of oohs and aahs in that Grandstand that day.
The American Stan was and is an immaculate, polished gentleman, with a lean figure, elegance personified:
Facially, he is more English than the English. Pasadena-born Stan Smith could be a Wing Commander in the RAF:
The Swiss Stan (actually Stanislas, the surname originating in Silesia) is a different type entirely. He is rough-hewn and raw; there’s something elemental and unfinished about him.5
The nickname “Stanimal” suits him.
At 183 cms (6 feet), he’s medium tall for a modern tennis player, with a barrel chest, big haunches, and stocky legs. He has the chubby face and blunt features of a Silesian peasant.
All tennis players (except Federer, who doesn’t sweat) end up soaked and rumpled. Stanimal begins that way.
His dress sense is… unique. He showed up in a Grand Slam final looking like this.
And beats prime Novak Djokovic. On clay.
How can you not love him?
His on-court demeanor is slightly belligerent and cantankerous, but nothing personal. He’s a big kid trying to work out a thorny problem the only way he knows how, by muscling through it (although that backhand is pure technique). He’s not a Connorseque court bully or McEnroeish simmering punk. He’s not a cool, cerebral cat like Federer. He’s gonna sweat buckets and bulldoze his way through this.
It is true that his style is to batter the opponent into submission rather than play defense but, again, hey, nothing personal. At the end of the match, win or lose, you get a warm hug at the net, unless you’ve dissed him.
After he wins a Grand Slam, Djokovic rips off his shirt and thumps his chest like a silverback gorilla.
Not Stan.
In the 2016 US Open final, Stan almost blew it. Before the match, he had a panic attack and somehow made it onto the court. True, it was only the 4th set, but the momentum had swung to Djoker, and I believe that he’d have taken the 5th set if it had gone there.
Djokovic, coming from 1-4 down, takes match point to deuce at 3-5, 40-40. Stan takes the next point: two scorching backhands which Djokovic returned, then Stan wrongfoots Novak by patting the ball over the net while Novak stays in the back court, expecting an overhead. Advantage Wawrinka.
Championship point. Stan faults the first serve. Second serve and the best returner in the game returns it with an OK backhand. Stan backhands. Djoker hits a routine backhand, something he’s hit ten million times, something that always goes in. A routine backhand, nothing special.
It goes out. Championship, Wawrinka.
What does Stan do—that silverback thing? The Borg thing, sinking to your knees as if you’re in a cathedral (so embarrassing, so excessive)? Nah. He does this:
And this:
Then hugs, like two boxers after a fight:
Stan Smith reached #1 in the rankings. Wawrinka’s highest rank was #3. He’s always been the other Swiss tennis player when the other Swiss tennis player was that guy, which is like laboring on the far side of the moon, perpetually. Which is fair, because since turning pro in the early 2000s Stan never approached the accomplishments of the Big Three, or Big Four if you count Murray on grass, and I do.6
But have a look at this:
Who won the hardest Grand Slam title ever calculated, the 2014 Australian Open (see link below)?
Stan Wawrinka.
Who won the second hardest Grand Slam title ever calculated, the 2015 French Open?
Stan Wawrinka.
Who won three of the five hardest Grand Slam titles ever calculated (#5 was the 2016 US Open)?
Stan Wawrinka.
Perhaps Ultimate Tennis Stats inputs screwy numbers. I don’t know, but according to them, from 2014 to 2016, Stan Wawrinka was a peer to three of the greatest players ever to pick up a racquet. Here is who he beat in the later rounds of three of the four Slams:
2014 Australian Open: Nadal, Berdych, Djokovic
2015 French: Djokovic, Tsonga, Federer
2016 US Open: Djokovic, Nishikori, del Potro
Stanimal never did much at Wimbledon; his game was unsuited to grass. A flaw for someone who has flirted with greatness. Agassi took his game apart, put it back together, and won Wimbledon; that’s why he’s one of the greats, not a near-great.
But Stan did pretty good for a journeyman, don’t you think?
Stanimal is now 38 years old. When I took those pics on August 23, 2023, I didn’t know that he had had two surgeries on his left foot and one on his left knee. He seemed to be moving really well, but you never know. Thirty-eight is old for a tennis player and for one who’s had three surgeries, it’s ancient.
He lost to twenty-two year old Jannik Sinner at the Open in the third round. He put up a valiant fight against the younger player but lost in four. This wasn’t Djokovic v. Shelton, a prime 36-year-old with the body of a 26-year-old against a raw 20-year-old with almost no experience on the grand stage. It was an aging 38-year-old against a blazing 22-year-old who’s on the brink of a major career if he can get his head together.
That backhand will be a thing of beauty forever but the chances of major championships are slim to none7. He’s still capable of moments of glory, especially in two-setters, as he proved with Frances Tiafoe recently, but winning seven straight three-of-five matches against younger players is a stretch, which is what you have to do to win Slams.
Stan says he plays for the love of the game but maybe it’s also because he can’t think of what else to do… unlike the Big Four, highly functional CEOs of mini-corporations with exceptionally stable lives, Stan is, to be blunt, a hot mess. His one marriage was stormy. He ricocheted from that to a relationship with a jailbait female player. Then another lady player. Now he’s allegedly with a model who looks like a porn star. (I have my doubts; I think those were just photo ops.)
I make no excuses for Stan the Man. He sounds like an immature guy who needs to grow up already, and he won’t grow up already until he leaves tennis, and he won’t leave tennis as long as he can make it through three sets.
In short, he’s no Stan Smith, an all-around prince of a guy who happened to be a great tennis player. He’s an overgrown child who will have a rough landing when the day comes that he can’t play the regular tour. When he goes onto the “Legends” tour, I’ll pay to see him. But for now—
No matter.
I stan for Stan—and Stan.
I hope you understand.
At the end of the day, Stan Smith helped to start the revolution that enabled Stan Wawrinka to make $36 million in prize money. That’s great! Stanimal deserves every Swiss franc. I’m happy that the players are raking it in, but…
For everything you gain, you lose, and I think the game has lost something.
What? That old team spirit.
With the Big Money came the Big Star. Sure, there were stars in the old days but not like today. With the Big Star comes the Big Entourage: the coach, the psychologist, the physical therapist, the masseur, the accountant, the agent, the lawyer(s), the PR machine, the wife8, the army of fluffers that keep the Big Star in working order.
Being a Big Star does something to a man’s mind: it sucks the oxygen out of it, and it did the same to the game. It sucked the oxygen out of everything that doesn’t promote the Big Star and by extension the Big Fluffer Entourage.
No one cares about the Davis Cup anymore. No one cares about doubles. And I think the sport as a whole is the poorer for it. I get the feeling that Stanimal might have been happier in the old days when players were part of a ragtag team, drinking beer together (can’t drink beer nowadays, it interferes with the machine), staying in cheap hotels to save money. Doubles was important. Stan takes Davis cup seriously, even now, at 38, when Davis Cup means nothing.
He’s a team guy in a Big Star environment and it doesn’t really suit him.
Of course, the problem is bigger than tennis. The team spirit seems to have gone from humanity, at least us in the prosperous West.
When it’s all about the Big Star and his Big Entourage, what about the rest of us? We’re not teammates, we’re Only Fans.
For aesthetic reasons, I’ve decided to put most links after the text. Most people don’t click anyway.
Fifty Years Ago the Men Boycotted Wimbledon. That Changed Everything
Roger Federer As A Religious Experience by David Foster Wallace
Think of it—if Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic had been banned from Grand Slam tournaments nobody would be talking about them as GOATs.
I don’t consider Stan’s 1972 crown to be worthy of an asterisk, even if John Newcombe wasn’t allowed to play, but it is worthy of a footnote. The “shamateur” associations running tennis prevented Rod Laver from playing in Grand Slam tournaments and no one asterisks these champions. PS - miserable punk Jimmy Connors did play in 1973.
If anything, Davis Cup was a bigger deal among American sports fans than the US Open, which was a local tournament in an out of the way part of NYC.
Except the creep Connors, who had to be cajoled.
So much for national stereotypes.
What’s not fair is to take away from any of his Slams. Yes, I know that in the AO 2014 Nadal had a back problem. He had a back problem named Stan Wawrinka. He had no back problem when he beat Federer in three sets. To win a Grand Slam you have to put together seven wins in a row and there’s bound to be a fluke in there somewhere. To do it three times is no fluke.
Actually, closer to none than slim.
The wife thing is a sore subject for another time. If a famous man doesn’t meet a woman early on such as Federer, Djokovic, and Murray did, he can never be sure that she isn’t a gold digger.
Absolutely superb writing. I don't know much about tennis - or any sport, really, except hockey - and I was riveted. Brava!