NEW YORK -- Switzerland has gotten a lot of mileage over the years from its reputation as the sleepy little emerald green country that remains neutral no matter what the skirmish is. But lately, that attitude hasn't translated to the tennis world.
The tiny nation of eight million people is the defending Davis Cup champions and has just as many players in the men's top 10 (two) as perennially strong Spain. Four days into this sweltering US Open tournament, the Swiss are making all sorts of headlines here -- and few of them would have anything to do with world No. 2 Roger Federer, the career Grand Slam title king.
Federer's win against top-ranked Novak Djokovic in Cincinnati just before the Open should have kept him in the news as a legitimate threat to wake up the echoes and win his 18th major here, which would be a huge feat at age 34.
But so far, Federer has been eclipsed by fifth-seeded countryman Stan Wawrinka's recent dramas and fitful move through this Open draw and 12th-ranked Belinda Bencic's temper tantrum and crying jag during her second-round win -- that's right, win -- over Misaki Doi of Japan. That set up a third-round match against Venus Williams.
Wawrinka's sluggishness continued Thursday with a 3-hour, 2-minute dogfight that he barely won 7-6, (2), 7-6 (4), 7-6 (6) against 19-year-old Hyeun Chung of Korea.
Wawrinka is the reigning French Open champ and the one with the cooler nickname (The Stanimal). Chung began the tournament ranked 69th in the world and brought only an 11-10 career record into the match. He has to wear prescription glasses on court, for god's sake. But Chung battled Wawrinka for every last point they played.
He was lucky to escape.
"I'm happy to get through," he said. "He played some great tennis in those tiebreaks. He's a great fighter."
Wawrinka knows he needs to get better if he's going to last in this tournament. And he got a bit of a break when 28th-seeded American Jack Sock, who would have been Wawrinka's next opponent, collapsed on the court on Thursday, succumbing to the 90-degree, midday heat with 40 percent humidity. Sock was packed in ice packs near the baseline for a while and had to retire from his match against unseeded Ruben Bemelmans of Belgium at 1-2 of the fourth set, leading two sets to one.
Wawrinka's game hasn't seemed the same since he and Kyrgios clashed during a match in Montreal a few weeks ago.
Kyrgios is a 20-year-old Australian showman with riveting ability. But he also has a growing résumé for crudeness. In just a few loutish remarks that on-court TV microphones picked up, he managed to allude to Wawrinka's broken marriage, Wawrinka's current dating life and embarrass a friend, fellow Aussie Thanasi Kokkinakis.
That earned Kyrgios a couple of fines and 28-day probation period from the ATP Tour.
Kyrgios is 0-3 since the incident. And Wawrinka isn't looking like the world-beater he was in Paris, though he arrived in New York claiming, "I don't really care anymore [about Kyrgios]. Had to let the ATP decide what they wanted to do with him, and they did."
Next to all that drama, Federer's almost comical habit of unselfconsciously complimenting himself in his own news conferences -- "I'm playing very well at the moment," he said Tuesday -- seems laughably tame.
About the most risqué thing Federer has ever done in public was get into an 2013 exchange with an interviewer who asked him what he planned to do with the cow he'd just won by capturing the Gstaad tournament. Told the gift cow was also pregnant, Federer blurted back, "I'm not the father."
Then he broke up laughing.
Perhaps the 18-year-old can take heart in the fact that Federer had a bad temper as a young player, too, but eventually grew out of it.
Bencic gained huge attention when she handed Serena Williams only her second loss of the year in the Toronto semifinals last month. Williams complimented Bencic effusively afterward, saying she was a rising player to watch.
Her meltdowns against Doi on Tuesday started with her taking a bathroom break to compose herself after losing the first set. Then at 5-all of the second, she began to tear up when a few line calls went against her. When Doi served to go up 6-5, the floodgates opened more. Bencic wept into her towel during the changeover. Then, serving to stay in the match at 5-6, 0-30, she slammed her racquet to the court after a chair umpire overrule that led to a replayed point.
Bencic could've folded there. Instead she fought off three match points, won the second-set tiebreaker 7-3, and seized the match in the third -- but not before griping that Doi's own bathroom break was taking too long.
"So you think this is fair?" she demanded from the chair umpire.
Bencic apologized to her fans via Twitter afterward, and several times again in her postmatch news conference. "I know I shouldn't have behaved like that, for sure I know that," she said. "Sometimes I just can't control myself right now. I for sure have to be working on that. But I think I'm not the only one who would freak out like this."
She's right, of course.
Refusing to be stuck in neutral is just not what we're used to seeing from the Swiss.