In winning his first US Open title and third Grand Slam singles crown, Stan Wawrinka defeated two US Open champions in Novak Djokovic and Juan Martin del Potro, a past US Open finalist in Kei Nishikori and a former Top 10 player in Fernando Verdasco.
The closest he came to losing, however, was in the third round against the unheralded Dan Evans, who entered the 2016 US Open ranked a career-best No. 64 and was bidding for his first round-of-16 showing at a Grand Slam. In fact, Wawrinka fought off a match point in the fourth-set tiebreak before gutting out a 4-6, 6-3, 6-7(6), 7-6(8), 6-2 victory over the 26-year-old Brit.
In doing so, the Swiss became just the seventh player in history to win a US Open singles title after trailing match point during that year’s event.
The others were Manual Orantes (1975 semifinals against Guillermo Vilas), Martina Navratilova (1986 semifinals against Steffi Graf), Boris Becker (1989 second round against Derrick Rostagno), Pete Sampras (1996 quarterfinals against Alex Corretja), Andy Roddick (2003 semifinals against David Nalbandian) and Djokovic (2011 semifinals against Roger Federer).
After his near-early exit at the hands of Evans, Wawrinka settled in to the tournament and played inspired tennis down the stretch. He would lose a single set to both del Potro in the quarterfinals and Nishikori in the semis before dismissing defending champion Djokovic in a four-set finale, stamping his name in the US Open record books as both a champion and a comeback kid.
