Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland, 40, celebrates after defeating Arthur Géa of France at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, on Thursday.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/The Associated Press
Gaël Monfils of France has a weird mannerism on court. Between points he bends over and leans on his racket like an old man leaning on his walking stick.
And old he most certainly is, at least in the context of the sport he plays. Thirty-nine is about 97 in tennis years. Dashing around a rectangle in pursuit of a flying yellow sphere and making your arm act like a bullwhip takes a toll on the body. With his habit of sliding around the court and launching his 6-foot-4 frame into the air to reach his opponents’ shots, Monfils has suffered injuries of the wrist, shoulder, ankle, foot and knee over his two decades of competition.
Yet there he was this week at one of the top four events in the tennis world – the Australian Open in Melbourne – facing a man who was a drooling toddler when Monfils first turned pro.
Monfils was one of five leading players in the winter of their careers who came to the open to reach for the gold ring one more time.
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Marin Cilic of Croatia, who captured the title at the U.S. Open in 2014, is 37. The last time he won a top-tier tournament was in 2024 in Hangzhou, China, hardly a capital of tennis. Forty-year-old Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland is a three-time winner of Grand Slam tournaments, but his last win came in 2016. Even the now-undisputed greatest of all time, Novak Djokovic, 38, hasn’t won a Grand Slam since 2023, formidable as he still is. Tennis legend Venus Williams is 45 years of age, making her the oldest woman ever to attend the main draw of the open.
All of them showed up to play, perchance to win. Williams competed in doubles and singles matches. She lost both, but she was there, hitting some beautiful winners with that familiar wide swing.
The fans loved it. It’s one thing to see a strong young knight knock another off a galloping horse with a lance – but how much better to see a grizzled old veteran who can barely lift himself into the saddle lower his lance and charge?
They filled the cavernous Rod Laver Arena to watch Djokovic, a 10-time winner in Melbourne, mow down a 23-year-old Italian, Francesco Maestrelli. They watched Cilic do the same to Canadian Dennis Shapovalov, 26. They roared their appreciation when Monfils unleashed one of his lashing forehands against the 24-year-old Dane Sweeny. The Aussie battler won in the end, but only after a four-set, four-hour thriller in which the Frenchman – who says this open was his last – showed why he has been so loved over the years.
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But the pièce de résistance happened on Thursday when Wawrinka, the oldest of the olds, met Frenchman Arthur Géa, who at 21 is about half his age. Géa has the body of a swimsuit model – broad shoulders, slim waist, cannons for arms. His outfit, Lacoste from top to bottom, was impeccable. Wawrinka, on the other hand, has the look of a Swiss peasant from a mountain canton where the beer is particularly good. You can imagine him mucking out a barn in coveralls and gumboots.
He once ranked No. 3 in the world; now he ranks No. 139. Like so many older players, he is familiar with the surgeon’s knife, having undergone corrective operations on a knee and a foot. He has said that this season will be his last on the tour.
So his showdown against Géa could have been a sad, even pathetic, affair. Instead it was a classic.
Géa took the first set. Wawrinka came back to win the second. The third went to Géa, then the fourth to Wawrinka, taking the match to a fifth and deciding frame.
Each man strained himself to the utmost. Géa played brilliantly, pressing the older man with deep, hard shots that rarely missed. Wawrinka replied with pluck, craft and force.
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His signature shot is a one-handed backhand. It is one of the most beautiful things in tennis. Wawrinka draws back his arm, almost as if drawing a bow. He seems to hesitate just for a second, then unleashes the arm in a whipping motion that ends with it flung high to the opposite side of his body.
He employed that famous weapon time after time against Géa, mixing in others to keep his opponent off balance. Here a drop shot that left Géa frozen like a statue. There a perfect volley that sent the lunging Frenchman tumbling to the deck.
It was not a perfect performance; far from it. He missed opportunities he would have exploited as a younger man. Forty is 40. But as the match wore on – it lasted a punishing four and a half hours – something surprising happened.
Instead of fading, Wawrinka gained energy. Indeed, he summoned it, putting a finger to his ear to invite louder cheers and, after breaks in play, trotting to the back of the court like a colt, sending the crowd into paroxysms. “Who’s the man?” someone yelled. “Stan’s the man,” the throng shouted back.
As the din echoed around Melbourne Park, the sprawling home of the open, word got out about what was happening in the arena. The few remaining seats filled up and long lines formed at the doors in case any came free.
The fifth set went to six games all. That meant a tiebreaker: First man to 10 points wins. Wawrinka opened with an ace – an untouchable serve – and never looked back. When it was over, he had become the oldest man to reach the third round of competition in Australia since 1978.
An interviewer asked how he felt. “Exhausted,” he replied. But he had proved something, if not to the crowd then to himself. The old guy still had it.