A different kind of "Stanimal"

— -- Bankable Grand Slam champions have tended to agree on at least one thing: The only thing more difficult than winning your first Grand Slam title is returning to defend it a year later.

In fact, the feat is so rare that it has only happened once at the Australian Open since the rehabilitation of the tournament in 1988, and this year Stan Wawrinka will try to join Stefan Edberg on that short list.

Wawrinka got off to a great start on Day 2, dismissing the finest player ever produced by Uzbekistan, No. 100 Marsal Ilhan. It was a 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 pasting, settled in less than an hour and a half. The way it played out, Wawrinka could be forgiven for wondering what all this fuss about defending a major is all about.

Rod Laver Arena provided a green backdrop of mostly empty seats as the defending champ and Ilhan, both with their hair tousled and looking like they'd just awakened from a long nap, strolled into the sunshine to a smattering of polite applause. There were no courtside reporters to deliver sotto voce assessments of either player's body language. If you wanted to watch Wawrinka's opening statement, you had to search the streaming menu. The overall impression was that if Stan is indeed the man, he's the man mostly for Stan fans.

Perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened to him. And the second best was Ilhan, an earnest, laudable tennis pioneer (he had to move to Turkey to pursue his dream of becoming an ATP pro) whose game has just enough rough edges to afford Wawrinka good purchase on the match.

Wawrinka, a 29-year-old Swiss, doesn't really belong with the likes of Gaston Gaudio or Albert Costa on that short, baffling list of "one-Slam wonders." Sure, he has a rich, decade-long history as a head case. And early in his career, he may not have been in the best of shape. Perhaps he wasted too many of his peak years languishing happily in the long shadow cast by his friend and fellow countryman, Roger Federer. And Wawrinka may not have won last year's Australian Open were it not for an unexpected back injury that visibly hampered the effort of his final opponent, Rafael Nadal (that 12-0 head-to-head advantage for Nadal going in was inescapable).

But none of that amounts to a hill of beans now. Wawrinka got his chance last year and he took it. Then he proceeded to back it up. He won his first Masters 1000 title (Monte Carlo) and hung in there as a solid world No. 4. At the end of the year, he stepped out of the shadows to become an equal partner with Federer. They teamed together to help Switzerland win the Davis Cup championship for the first time.

Was there pressure on Wawrinka as this Australian Open approached? Most decidedly. But you wouldn't have known it from the lack of fanfare accompanying Wawrinka's debut Tuesday -- or from the way Wawrinka played and approached the match. As he said of his chances of defending in his pre-tournament news conference:

"For me, most important is to be ready for the first match. I know how it is. I've been playing since so many years to know the deal. You have to be ready, take match after match, and see where you can go."

Ilhan has a nice game, but it's neither overpowering nor weird enough to buffalo players of the top class (hence Ilhan's 11-match losing streak in ATP main tour matches going into this event). His forehand can be menacing, but it's more like a high-pressure garden hose than a sharpshooter's pistol. Although he moves pretty well, you sometimes wonder if Ilhan really knows where he needs to go; he seems to be from the "let's just wait see what happens next" school of strategic thinking.

That made things relatively easy for Wawrinka, whose engine turned over and coughed to life quickly. Ilhan booted a forehand to go down 2-0, after which Wawrinka won the next game with a familiar one-two punch -- a backhand down-the-line blast for 40-15, followed by an ace. He was off and running, unstoppable.

Wawrinka probably is the most bullish player in the game today. His racket appears to swallow the ball and, after an interval that is as ominous as it is brief, launch it back with something like a bad attitude. Yet as much as he muscles his shots, there's usually something sweet, clean and categorical about the result.

Commenting on the match, former pro Jan-Michael Gambill remarked of Wawrinka's skills: "He's got that backhand down the line, but he also has that forehand down the line."

That about sums it up. No wonder Wawrinka's racket sponsor, perhaps not content with those "Manislaus" or "Stan the Man" monikers, chose to embroider a single word on his racquet bag: "Stanimal."

We'll see as this tournament progresses just how capable Wawrinka is of running with the big dogs named Djokovic, Federer and Nadal. Asked if he's thought ahead that far, Wawrinka replied. "Not really. It's too far. It's honestly too far. I check the draw. I saw the draw. I saw the seed. I saw what could be my draw."

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Nothing Stanimalistic about his plans. Maybe defending that first major is less tricky for some than it is for others.