By Chris Oddo | Monday May 28, 2018
Stan Wawrinka couldn't overcome his knee issues or Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and suffered his tenth career first-round defeat at a major.
Photo Source: Cameron Spencer/Getty.
2017 runner-up and 2015 champion Stan Wawrinka has been knocked out of Roland Garros in the first round. The Swiss fell to Spain’s Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, 6-2, 3-6, 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-3 in early action on Monday on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
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Wawrinka’s loss means the Swiss will drop outside of the Top 250 in the ATP rankings after Roland Garros. After double knee surgery last summer the former World No.3 drops to 4-7 on the season and 38-13 lifetime at Roland Garros.
Garcia-Lopez has now defeated Wawrinka in the first round at Roland Garros twice. The 34-year-old notched a four-set win over Wawrinka in Paris in 2014. He will face Russia’s Karen Khachanov in second-round action.
Wawrinka clearly struggled with his left knee during the match, and needed to see the trainer while serving at 4-2 in the first set after feeling a sharp pain and repeatedly shaking the knee to test it out. But he soldiered on and played with no discernable issues in the ensuing sets, and eventually took a break lead in the fourth before letting it slip and dropping the fourth set in a tieabreaker.
After the match an upbeat Wawrinka said the surgically repaired knee wasn't the issue, and added that the pain he felt was unrelated to the surgery although in the same knee.
“My knee is good, completely fine,” he said. “Completely unconnected [to the previous injury]. I just felt a really strange pain on the same knee, on the side, so I wanted to fix it. The physio just manipulated it a little bit and now there is no after-effect. I’m happy with that. What dominates mostly is mental tiredness. I was very close to winning."
He added: “My knee is good. I'm happy with that. That's really positive to see, but it's been now a few weeks that I'm feeling great with that sort of injury I did. So that's good. I'm in the right way, and I need to keep pushing.”
Garcia-Lopez moved ahead early in the fifth and never faced a break point down the stretch. The Spaniard closed with an insurance break at love to finish the match in 3:30.
Benoit Paire, Ernests Gulbis, Dusan Lajovic, Cameron Norrie, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Marco Cecchinato were among the other early winners on Day 2 at Roland Garros.