After his first-round destruction of Turkey’s Marsel Ilhan, Stan Wawrinka roughed up another competitor—the French Open’s official website.
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Offended by an article that was published on Saturday which rehashed the turbulence that has characterized his divorce from his wife (the article has since been removed), Wawrinka said he talked to the tournament immediately after reading the piece.
“Completely stupid article,” Wawrinka said. “It's official website of a Grand Slam, so I hope the guy who did that article is not a journalist. I also hope the guy who is supposed to check all the article on the website is not working anymore for the tournament. Because for me, for a Grand Slam website, it should be an article about the tennis and that's it.”
He added: “I saw the article last night. I told the tournament that I wasn't really happy about it, and I don't think it was great for the tournament to do that shit article. That's it. But after that, you know, I'm here to play tennis and to focus on my game. I can put that on the side, and that's it.”
We first saw the article yesterday, when it was linked to from tennis journalist Courtney Nguyen’s Twitter feed:
But when we checked back to read it again after reading Wawrinka’s comments, we found that Roland Garros had played a let! French Open tournament director, Gilbert Ysern, had the following to say:
"Nobody is perfect. Everybody aspires to excellence, but excellence doesn't mean perfection. We might miss something. Yeah, that's true there was a paper that was written by a journalist and that was not appropriate. It's the least we can say. And the person in charge of proofreading missed that. It happens."
Wawrinka, who defeated Ilhan 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 on Day 1, will face Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic in the second round. If the seeds hold he could face Roger Federer in the quarterfinals.