Sleepy Stan Wawrinka awakes just in time

2:14 PM ET

PARIS — A day after Stan Wawrinka won a clay-court title in Geneva, he arrived at Roland Garros — the same day the French Open started. He admitted this was a little unusual and left him precious little time to even think about his title defense. Nearly every question in his pre-tournament news conference was intended to get him to wax rhapsodic about his dream run here last year and the colossal upset he pulled off in the final against top-ranked Novak Djokovic.

But a sleepy-looking Wawrinka didn’t seem eager to be taken back there. He said last year was last year, it’s over, and that’s that.

“Novak is the favorite here, for sure,” Wawrinka insisted. “That’s a fact.”

Then Wawrinka took the court in his first-round match Monday and played like truer words were never spoken.

Stan Wawrinka came perilously close to becoming the first men’s defending champ to lose in the French Open first round. Dennis Grombkowski/Getty Images

Warwinka had to rally from a two-set deficit against unseeded Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic to avoid becoming the first man in the Open era to sandwich first-round defeats in Paris around winning the French Open title. The outcome was so in doubt for so long, that at the end of his 4-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 escape, Wawrinka raised his arms and stuck out his tongue like he was relieved.

Asked later if he knew what bad history he would’ve made with a loss, Wawrinka smirked and said, “No. And it’s still not the case, so that’s good.” Then he laughed.

Maybe Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer, two of Wawrinka’s best friends on tour, are good enough to preen afterward as if they know all along they have these kind of gnarly matches won. But the 31-year-old Wawrinka, who is seeded third here this year, often devotes a good amount of time telling everyone how good he is not. And that’s a bit different, too, considering he’s the few men who has broken the hegemony at the top of …

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