Stan Wawrinka battles past Stefanos Tsitsipas in one of the greatest ever French Open matches

Stan Wawrinka will face Roger Federer in the quarter-finals

The three-time slam champion Stan Wawrinka has not won a tournament since he underwent double knee surgery in the summer of 2017. But Wawrinka certainly won over Court Suzanne Lenglen in what was arguably the match of the tournament so far.

Playing Greece’s fast-rising Stefanos Tsitsipas – another man with a beefy single-handed backhand – Wawrinka needed 5hr 9min to close out a 7-6, 5-7, 6-4, 3-6, 8-6 win with a gorgeous passing shot that slipped past the onrushing Tsitsipas and landed bang on the sideline.

“Today we saw only one centimetre can change the winner,” said Wawrinka, who will take on compatriot Roger Federer in Tuesday’s quarter-final. “I never experience that kind of atmosphere here in Paris on the Lenglen [the second arena of Roland Garros]. This is the reason why I still play tennis, and why I’m practicing every day to try to win big matches like that.”

Tsitsipas was so desperate to win that he kept throwing himself around like Boris Becker at Wimbledon, leaving his kit bathed in red clay granules. When he went match-point down, he smacked himself in the forehead so hard that his ears must have been ringing, and when he came into the interview room he could barely speak.

“I feel exhausted,” said Tsitsipas, who had won both of his two previous five-set matches. “I never experienced something like this in my life. I feel very disappointed at the end. “It’s a long time since I cried after a match, so emotionally it wasn’t easy to handle. I will try to learn from it as much as I can.”