When Stan Wawrinka recently said that he had “squeezed the lemon until the last drop,” many people interpreted it as the classic peaceful message from a champion reaching the end of his career with serenity. Almost as if he had finally made peace with everything after twenty years of pressure, sacrifices, injuries, and battles at the highest level. And maybe part of that is true. Wawrinka genuinely seems like one of the few great players capable of looking back without the obsessive need to rewrite the past or constantly think about what could have been.

But honestly, the most interesting part of his words is not the idea of having no regrets. It’s understanding what that sentence actually means after spending twenty years inside professional tennis. Because in reality, “having no regrets” does not mean you did everything perfectly. It does not mean you never suffered. It does not mean you didn’t lose years, opportunities, energy, or parts of yourself along the way. Very often, it simply means accepting that the price you paid was part of the path you chose.

And this is where Wawrinka’s story becomes much deeper and much more human than people realize. For years he lived in Federer’s shadow. Not only technically or commercially, but almost psychologically. Being Swiss during the Federer era meant constantly living next to something that felt almost unreachable. Most players would have slowly disappeared inside that comparison. Wawrinka, instead, eventually did something extremely rare: he stopped trying to become Federer and finally started becoming himself.

That was probably the real beginning of his career. Because many players spend years unconsciously trying to become the version that the world expects them to be. Wawrinka built his identity much later than most modern players do, and psychologically that changes everything. When an athlete reaches his peak later in life, he often develops a desperate relationship with time. Deep down, he knows the window is shorter. He knows the body will not wait forever. He knows every lost season carries more weight.

And right when he had finally become one of the most dangerous players in the world, his body slowly started pushing back. The knee injury in 2017 changed his career dramatically. And this reveals one of the cruelest truths in professional sports: the body rarely breaks down when the mind is emotionally ready to let go. It usually breaks down while the competitor inside still wants to fight. While part of you still believes you can push harder, improve more, compete again at the highest level.

This is something people outside professional sports rarely understand completely. After twenty years at that level, tennis is no longer just a sport or a job. It becomes structure. Identity. Direction. The brain organizes itself around training, suffering, traveling, improving, competing, resisting. For many athletes, this stops being simply something they do and slowly becomes who they are. And when the body starts losing the ability to support that system, the problem is no longer only physical. It becomes emotional. Mental. Almost existential.

That is probably why Wawrinka’s sentence feels so powerful. “I squeezed the lemon until the last drop” does not sound like motivational marketing. It sounds like lucid exhaustion. Like someone who knows exactly how much he gave to tennis… and how much tennis took from him in return. Because professional sport at the highest level does not only consume the body. It consumes the nervous system. It slowly drains invisible emotional energy that the public almost never sees. And the more competitive the athlete is, the harder it becomes to stop without feeling an enormous emptiness inside.

Maybe that is also why Wawrinka still keeps competing today despite his age, ranking, and physical limitations clearly telling him that time has changed. But the interesting thing is that he seems to have accepted reality without losing his competitive fire. And that is a huge difference. Because many people think acceptance means giving up. Wawrinka seems to have found something much rarer: continuing to compete without denying reality.

He knows his body is no longer the same. He knows he will probably never again be the player he was in 2015. He knows tennis is slowly reaching its end for him. And yet he continues. Not because he is living in illusion. Not because he refuses to accept reality. But because the competitor inside him still exists.

And maybe that is what makes his career feel so unique. Wawrinka was not the most dominant player of his generation. But he may have been one of the most authentic. Because his story does not feel like the story of a chosen prodigy who always had everything under control. It feels more like the story of a man who needed years to truly become himself… and because of that, learned better than most people how to live with time, pain, and the ending of things.

Maybe in the end, having “no regrets” does not mean winning everything or doing everything perfectly.

Maybe it simply means knowing you did not hide… when it was finally time to push completely.

📩 Want to work on these situations for real, without avoiding the issue?
DOWNLOAD the FREE BOOK: Why You Lose Important Games
👉 https://patreon18.aweb.page/master-pressure-games

Federico Coppini
Mental Coach & Tennis Coach
Founder – Coppini Tennis Academy
🎾 https://www.coppinitennisacademy.com