Earn For Tricks

MELBOURNE, Australia — After two weeks of madness that included extreme temperatures and a player who hallucinated and saw Snoopy and a lightning strike and a rain delay and an infamous blister and new rackets and celebrity coaches and upsets galore and an infamous back injury, the Australian Open ended Sunday.

After all that, officials crowned a men’s singles champion: Stanislas Wawrinka.

Stanislas Wawrinka?

Indeed. For all the talk of Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg becoming coaches, of Roger Federer’s new racket, of swings in weather, of early exits by the defending champions Novak Djokovic and Victoria Azarenka, Wawrinka triumphed. With that, he brought the strangest match of an odd tournament to a conclusion no one had expected at the outset.

The final tally read 6-3, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, Wawrinka of Switzerland over Rafael Nadal of Spain, and yet the score explained only a fraction of what took place. In victory, Wawrinka became the lowest-ranked man to win a Grand Slam singles title since 2004, the lowest-seeded man to win the Australian Open since 2002 and the oldest first-time men’s Grand Slam champion since 2001 at age 28.

Wild, in a word.

“I still think that I’m dreaming,” Wawrinka said.

His championship was, to understate, unusual. In the previous 35 men’s Grand Slam singles finals, four men won 34 times — Nadal, Federer, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray.

It seemed all but certain Sunday that Nadal would make it 35 of 36 at Melbourne Park.

He did not. But the end came with muted celebration, ended with Wawrinka before the championship ceremony seeking out and consoling Nadal. Wawrinka smiled but not too widely and not for long. He threw a wristband into the stands. He sipped water and patted Nadal on the back, the same place where all the trouble Sunday started.

“That’s not the real moment to talk about that,” Nadal said afterward. “Stan is playing unbelievable. He deserved to win that title.”

The first three sets played out like a three-act play, each act so different as to seem as if there were three separate matches. Set one: Wawrinka went all Rod Laver and pushed Nadal around. Set two: Nadal appeared to throw out his back and needed a medical timeout and played with a permanent grimace. Set three: Nadal moved better, the tension in the match dissipated and Wawrinka came undone.

Strange match. Strange tournament.

As the first set unfolded, those who assembled inside Rod Laver Arena watched in disbelief. Here were two players and one was dominating and his name was not Nadal. Not only was Wawrinka in his first Australian Open final, but in 12 previous matches against Nadal, he had lost each of 26 total sets.

Yet Wawrinka bullied Nadal, something that happens rarely and almost never in Grand Slam tournaments and about as often in a major final as stumbling upon a unicorn. Wawrinka served-and-volleyed. He laced one-handed backhand winners down the line. He took Nadal out of position and went the other way. He won with shotmaking and creativity and force. He out-Nadal-ed Nadal, basically.

“I was more surprised about how well I was playing,” Wawrinka said.

One game proved particularly instructive. Wawrinka served for the first set, ahead, 5-3, but behind 0-40. Nadal faced three second serves on those break points and failed to convert on each of them. Wawrinka boomed an ace wide to hold for a 34th-consecutive service game.

Then the second set started, and it became clearer and clearer that Nadal’s back hurt. Throughout the tournament, he toughed out victories despite a blister about the size of his quarter on his left palm; the most analyzed, discussed and shown-on-television blister, it seemed, in the history of tennis.

Nadal did not take a medical timeout in the second set because his blister hurt. He took the timeout because of his back, and the pain appeared severe and seemed to worsen as the second set wore on.

Wawrinka continued to cruise early in the second, before the medical timeout. He ripped forehand winners. He smacked one return on the backhand side at such an extreme angle Nadal could only watch as it bounced and kicked sideways. Birds circled above, and it seemed fair to wonder if a buzzard or two was not up there among them.

Nadal took the medical timeout at roughly 8:40 p.m. local time. He had clutched his back a few times before that, but it was unclear at that point just how much pain he was in. He retreated to the locker room, while Wawrinka talked to an official about what seemed like potentially more of a stall tactic than an emergency.

When Nadal returned from the locker room, he did so shirtless, à la Tim Tebow with the New York Jets, and the crowd booed him when he stepped back into the court. That seemed harsh as the set wore on, as Nadal basically flicked serves over the net because he could hardly turn on them.

Nadal spent one second-set changeover with his head buried in his hands. He spent the time between the second and third sets getting rubbed down. He grimaced and moved gingerly and generally played like an old man, or least a far older one.

Afterward, Nadal tried to avoid making the aftermath about his injury. He did allow that his back hurt during warm-ups. He did acknowledge how often he seems to miss this tournament with an injury or sustain one while playing here. He seemed reflective and tired but mostly sad.

“I talk enough about that, I think,” he said to another back question.

As Nadal fought through the pain, it was also tricky for Wawrinka (although more difficult, obviously, for the injured party). It looked like Wawrinka was weighing how he should play, how aggressive he should be, whether to step on the throat of a clearly diminished opponent. Then again, with the stakes involved, what was he supposed to do? Ease up?

Wawrinka’s level slowed some and Nadal’s picked up. It was clear that Nadal’s injury had affected both players, even if inadvertently. Nadal started to move better. He held serve to start the third set and broke Wawrinka after that. There was some daylight, and though he still he could not serve or move all that well, he mounted an odd comeback.

“Sorry to finish this way,” Nadal said in his runner-up speech. “I tried very, very hard.”

For Nadal, there would be no 14th Grand Slam championship. He would not tie Pete Sampras for second place all-time, would not creep closer to Federer’s total of 17, would not become the first player in the Open era to secure every major tournament title at least twice.

Not on Sunday, anyway.

For Wawrinka, there was elation, even if the back injury slightly overshadowed, perhaps unfairly, what he managed to pull off here. Not only did he upend the top two seeds, including a longtime foil in Djokovic, but his victory will push him upward to No. 3 in the next A.T.P. World Tour rankings, ahead of a certain Swiss tennis legend who overshadowed his whole career.

Federer called with congratulations.

Hours after the match ended, Wawrinka finished up his news conference. Someone asked how he planned to celebrate.

“There’s a big chance I get drunk tonight,” he said.