Stan Wawrinka has pulled out of the Swiss Indoors competition in Basel after suffering a back injury during his pre-match training.
In a media release, Wawrinka said he had “turned his back” which left him with only one option – to withdraw from the competition that began on Sunday. The Swiss player was supposed to play Adrian Mannarino in his first round match.
Wawrinka has been replaced by lucky loser Dusan Lajovic, who will now take on Mannarino in his opener.
Having made the semi-final at the St. Petersburg Open recently before he lost to Martin Klizan, Wawrinka looked like he was coming into his own towards this latter part of the season after his woes with fitness earlier. However, in the past two tournaments at Japan Open and the Shanghai Masters, Wawrinka lost two of the three matches he played and generally struggled to get going.
These defeats came at the hands of Denis Shapovalov and Borna Coric respectively.
Interestingly, Wawrinka isn’t the only Swiss player who has had an injury issue in recent times with Roger Federer, an eight-time champion at the Swiss Indoors, also revealing before the tournament he had a hand injury right throughout the summer. However, Federer said, things were better now and he will take on Filip Krajinovic in his first round match.
In some of the matches that have been played at the Swiss Indoors Open so far, third seeded Marin Cilic, also a former champion at this competition, disposed off Shapovalov in straight sets in his opener. He will now take on Marius Copil, a qualifier who got rid of Ryan Harrison in his first round encounter.
Another home player Henri Laaksonen also made it made it round two with a surprise 6-4, 6-2 win over the sixth seeded Marco Cecchinato.
Other than Federer and Cilic, Alexander Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Jack Sock and Daniil Medvedev are some of the top players who will be in action during the tournament this week.
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