Cobolli-Wawrinka: depth against the one-handed backhand
Flavio Cobolli is the favorite in the Grand Prix Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes round of 16 against Stan Wawrinka, and his edge lies in rally length. Wawrinka, 41, wins the points he finishes with his first serve or his first backhand. Cobolli wins the ones where he keeps him in the court and pushes the ball deep to the one-handed backhand. The two previous meetings show that the Swiss can take the match to a tie-break. There the forecast tightens.
Wawrinka's serve, the only shortcut
In the first round Wawrinka beat Martín Landaluce 6-3, 6-7, 7-6. He hit 16 aces and won 77 points on serve, recovered from 0-40 in the first game of the third set and, after wasting three match points at 6-5, closed out the tie-break 7-5. It is his first win on the main tour since May.
That serving output is his shortest road to the quarterfinal. With the first serve in, Wawrinka plays the next shot standing still and inside the court, the position from which the one-handed backhand still hurts.
The head-to-head confirms that the match is played on the service games. Cobolli won both previous meetings, each in a third set: 6-7, 7-6, 6-3 in Shanghai in 2024, with a single break in the whole match, and 6-4, 6-7, 7-6 at the United Cup in January. Wawrinka won the second-set tie-break in Perth, 7-2.
Six sets played, four tie-breaks, two won by each.
Cobolli's depth on the one-handed backhand
Cobolli's plan runs through the baseline rally. Wawrinka's backhand remains a winner when the ball arrives at hip height. When it arrives high and forces him to hit from behind the line, it becomes a defensive shot, often played with the slice.
Cobolli's heavy forehand produces that ball. In Perth the only set decided by a break was the first, 6-4 for Cobolli. On hard courts the heavy ball kicks up less than on the clay of Roland Garros, where Cobolli reached the final, so in Lyon he has to work more on depth than on bounce height.
Then there are the legs. Wawrinka comes off more than two hours and forty minutes against Landaluce, a few days before Basel, the last ATP tournament of his career. Every long rally costs him more than it costs his opponent.
The risk lies in Cobolli's forehand
The doubt about the favorite is his form. Cobolli went out in the first round in Beijing and in his first match in Shanghai, where Adrian Mannarino beat him 6-1, 4-6, 6-3: 40 unforced errors, 21 of them off the forehand, five service games lost. The shot that has to keep Wawrinka behind the line is the same one that went off target in China.
The Race explains the pressure. On October 18 Cobolli was fifth with 3,540 points, 381 ahead of Rafael Jodar, the last man in the qualification zone after the early end of Jannik Sinner's season. The Lyon title is worth 250, and a lost round of 16 would leave only the Vienna and Basel week and then Paris.
Cobolli stays a clear favorite because his depth on the one-handed backhand and the fatigue of a 41-year-old push in the same direction. The longer the rally, the more the match is his. The ranking gap, however, overstates the real distance, since both previous meetings went to a third set. The forecast breaks down if Wawrinka serves as he did against Landaluce and Cobolli repeats his Shanghai forehand errors. In that case it goes to tie-breaks, and there the head-to-head says two apiece.
