Stan Wawrinka can chuckle after avoiding historic loss in Paris

PARIS – So, Stan Wawrinka was asked, were you aware that in the long history of the French Open, no defending champion ever had lost in the first round?

“No,” Wawrinka replied quickly, his arms crossed, the hint of a smirk on his scruffy face. After waiting a comedic beat, he added with a chuckle: “And it’s still not the case, so it’s good.”

Sure, by then, it was easy for the 2015 champion at Roland Garros to kid around, because he barely avoided making the sort of history no athlete would embrace. Eventually warming up on a gray, chilly afternoon, and twice coming back from a set down, Wawrinka edged 59th-ranked Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic 4-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 on Monday to sneak into the second round.

“I know that physically I’m stronger than he is, and I knew that he was going to decline a little bit,” the No. 3-seeded Wawrinka said. “That’s exactly what happened.”

Something similar transpired several hours later, when No. 2 Andy Murray faced an even greater deficit, dropping the first two sets against 128th-ranked qualifier Radek Stepanek, who at 37 is the oldest man in the field. Their match didn’t finish, though, suspended until Tuesday because of darkness.

After the net-charging Stepanek raced to a 6-3, 6-3 lead, his legs began to falter, and Murray started to work his way back into the match.

The two-time major champion took the third set 6-0, and was up a break at 4-2 in the fourth when they stopped. As dusk began to arrive – there are no artificial lights at Roland Garros – Murray accused his opponent of gamesmanship, complaining to the chair umpire that Stepanek was trying to delay the proceedings.

“How many things can he do to slow the play down?” Murray said after Stepanek headed to the locker room before the third set, adding: “Keep an eye on how long this toilet break is.”

After returning to the court, Stepanek changed shirts, drawing a warning for wasting time.

If he was hoping to force the match to a second day, it worked.

While Stepanek can rest and regroup before resuming his bid to make Murray the tournament’s first No. 2 seed to bow out in the first round since Pete Sampras in 2000, Rosol had no such opportunity to gather himself.

Only four times in the history of the clay-court tournament, which began admitting non-French players in 1925, had the defending champion even lost as early as the second round – most recently Juan Carlos Ferrero in 2004.

And early on against Rosol, nothing went Wawrinka’s way. Even his terrific backhand was problematic, including one shank that landed well long to end the third set. In all, Wawrinka made 46 unforced errors, 17 on the backhand side, creating the possibility of what earlier was a tough-to-envision result for all sorts of reasons.

Wawrinka is a two-time Grand Slam title winner, having broken through with his first at the 2014 Australian Open, before getting No. 2 a year ago at Roland Garros by beating No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the final.

And Rosol? He never has made it past the third round in 20 appearances at major tournaments and began the day with a 110-136 career record in tour-level matches.

Still, this would not have been the first significant and surprising victory of his career: Rosol defeated No. 1 Rafael Nadal in the second round at Wimbledon in 2012, displaying the same sort of go-for-broke, flat groundstrokes and intimidating serve he used to such great effect against Wawrinka.

Consider, too, also the past record between Wawrinka and Rosol. They had played four times previously, with Wawrinka winning each time, most recently on Friday on red clay at Geneva en route to the title there.

But 72 hours later, on the same surface but in a far more important setting, Wawrinka was troubled by Rosol.