Stan Wawrinka was anything but pleased after squandering three match points on Tuesday as he fell to 19-year-old Holger Rune in Paris, 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(3). The Swiss has made significant improvements to his game over the last month, and was bidding for his third consecutive top-20 win.
The rowdy fans on Court 1 were vehemently in Wawrinka’s corner, and his opponent was letting his emotions get the best of him at times.
As it boiled over and Wawrinka started to process his opportunity missed, he gave the 19-year-old a piece of his mind.
"My advice to you is that you stop acting like a baby on court,” a bitter Wawrinka told the Dane as they shook hands.
Rune himself didn’t seem to take the admonition too hard. He later took to Twitter to praise Wawrinka.
The words left his mom and manager, Aneke Rune, wondering what her son had done.
"It is hard to imagine that a sportsman like Stan would have said that,” she said. “Then he would come across as an uncommonly bad loser. Holger has only mentioned that he wished him well with the results of the past weeks."
Rune has drawn the ire of other tennis players in 2022, most notably Casper Ruud at Roland-Garros. After a quarterfinal match (won by Ruud) in which Rune scolded his mother from the court, Ruud and Rune took their widely publicized war of words into the locker room.
Nobody would deny that Rune is a passionate youngster who can sometimes fly off the handle. He’s hungry to win and frustrated when he doesn’t. Whether he deserved Wawrinka’s critique or not, it’s clear that he’s getting under the skin of his opponents.