Stan Wawrinka arrived in Rome to have one more chance to compete in the Foro Italico main draw. He got one win in the qualification rounds. And at last, some ten minutes before he should have entered the court for the second round, his body said no.

Wawrinka pulled out of the tournament a few minutes before his second-round qualifying match against Pablo Carreno Busta. The Spaniard went through to the main draw courtesy of a walkover. To the Swiss, it is the farewell to his Rome campaign in his final season on tour – not the goodbye the Foro Italico deserved to give him. 

The physical pain, which caused the withdrawal, followed his marathon battle with Stefano Travaglia on Monday. The 41-year-old had struggled through that opener in three sets, going down in the first and narrowly escaping in a tiebreak to the second set and then asserting himself in the third, winning 4-6, 7-6, 6-1 after two hours and eighteen minutes on the court. It was the type of work that demonstrated precisely why Wawrinka is still here competing in his final season. After the marathon game, the heavy toll it took was also apparent.

The former world No. 3 seemed sick as he stepped off the court after the Travaglia match. There were signs, and when Tuesday morning had come, his walkover with Carreno Busta was confirmed – the verdict was made. He now has a 6-10 win-lose record in 16 games in 2026. The qualifying win over the Italian in Rome had broken a two-month winless streak. Among all the things to carry away this week, that is the thing to cling to.

The story of his performance at the Foro Italico is woven into the fabric of the tournament. Wawrinka reached the final in Rome in 2008, falling to Novak Djokovic, and then made the semifinals in 2015, defeating Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals before losing to Roger Federer. 

Two of the greatest matches ever played in the Italian Open, which involved his majestic one-handed backhand – A walkover to leave them is not the sort of end they deserved. 

The withdrawal raises serious questions about his physical health in his farewell season, as the clay swing is not over yet. Roland Garros awaits, and this time it carries more weight than any edition before it. 

Wawrinka Eyes One Last Roland Garros & then Basel

Roland Garros confirmed last month that Wawrinka will play his 21st and final time at the tournament, where he has previously won and been a finalist in 2015 and 2017, respectively. He will most likely be given a wild card.

His calendar now continues to the Bordeaux Challenger between May 12-17, followed by the Geneva event between May 17-23, before Roland Garros starts May 24. 

The doubt remains whether his body will cooperate across that stretch. A two-hour eighteen-minute qualifying match exhausting enough to necessitate a withdrawal the following morning is not an easy pointer to the future. Wawrinka was always a fighter, giving everything on the court. That has not changed. It is just costlier now, at 41, in the final months of a career that has spanned well over two decades. 

And at the end of it all, there awaits Basel. The Swiss Indoors, which will run between October 26 and November 1, will be the last of his professional career, and organizers are already planning to honor him on the opening Monday of the event. This will be a special event, which will be an emotional evening of recollections and moments of his career, not an event unto itself, but a part of the tournament week. 

When he announced his retirement at the end of 2025, Wawrinka wrote: “Every book needs an ending. It’s time to write the final chapter of my career as a professional tennis player. 2026 will be my last year on tour. One last push.”

Rome did not grant him the chapter he desired. But there are still chapters left to write. The one-handed backhand, which has characterized his career, has courts to visit, crowds to move, and matches to play. The farewell is not over. It simply failed to turn out the way anyone wanted this week.