Stan Wawrinka’s final appearance at the Rolex Monte Carlo Masters ended Monday with a straight-sets loss, but the result was only part of the story. The 41-year-old Swiss, playing his last Monte Carlo campaign during the final season of his ATP Tour career, fell 7-5, 7-5 to Argentina’s Sebastian Baez in the opening round.
For Wawrinka, the defeat closed the book on one of the most meaningful stops of his career. Monte Carlo was where he won his only ATP Masters 1000 title in 2014, beating Roger Federer in an all-Swiss final. Ahead of his farewell match, ATP Tour framed the event as one of the tournaments that helped define his journey, and Wawrinka himself called the memories there “incredible.”
Monday’s match still gave the crowd a glimpse of the version of Wawrinka that made Monte Carlo one of his signature stages. He surged to an early 3-1 lead in the first set and, after trailing 1-5 in the second, clawed his way back to 5-all by recovering two breaks. But Baez steadied at the right moment, broke again after Wawrinka held a 40-15 lead in the 11th game, then served out the match to move on.
Baez’s win carried its own significance. It was his first victory in the Principality, and it sent him into the second round for a meeting with world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz, the kind of next-step storyline Monte Carlo always seems to produce.
The numbers told part of the story of why Wawrinka could not quite extend the moment. Monte Carlo’s official report said he finished with 32 unforced errors, while Baez held a 14-8 edge in rallies of nine shots or more. On clay, where patience and point construction matter as much as first-strike power, that gap proved decisive.
Even so, this was less a story about defeat than farewell. Wawrinka was making his 16th and final appearance at the tournament and leaves with a 22-15 record there, plus the memory of the 2014 title that remains one of the defining achievements of his career. Monte Carlo was never just another stop for him. It was a place tied to his rise, his clay-court identity, and one of the best weeks he ever produced.
As the ATP Tour moves deeper into the European clay swing, Monte Carlo will keep moving without him. But for one afternoon, the tournament paused long enough to say goodbye to one of its former champions, and to a player whose one-handed backhand and stubborn resilience always seemed to belong on courts like these. That Wawrinka nearly forced one more twist before the end only made the exit feel more fitting.
