WIMBLEDON — When men’s tennis fans were worrying about what the world would look like after Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic, part of the fear came from the last time male legends of the sport started to fade from view.
When Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi started to slow down in the early part of the 2000s, there was an interregnum before Federer et al emerged. Thomas Johansson and Albert Costa won the first two majors of 2002 and Juan Carlos Ferrero won his only Grand Slam the following year, as did Gaston Gaudio in 2004. None of those one-time winners had to beat Agassi or Sampras (who played his last match in September 2002), or Federer, to win their title.
The sport braced itself for something similar when Federer, Nadal and Djokovic would begin to fade. Tennis is at its most potent when winning a major feels like the holy grail — something that can only be achieved by going through dark places and getting past the very best. Their cross-surface dominance — compared to the 2000-03 prevalence of specialism — has only intensified this feeling, however much it might be a newer and less entrenched phenomenon than it first appeared.
GO DEEPER
Surface mastery: How Alcaraz won Grand Slams on hard, grass and clay courts
Sunday’s Wimbledon finalists, Carlos Alcaraz and Djokovic, and current world No 1 Jannik Sinner, have prevented any post-Big Three comedown. Djokovic has done his bit for the transition by refusing to stop being a major factor in men’s tennis. At 37, he is not just still playing, but still getting to finals, and ensuring that winning a major still feels like a monumental achievement.
Alcaraz beat Djokovic in the Wimbledon final for the second time in a row (Frey/TPN via Getty Images)
Even in Sunday’s straight-sets defeat when he didn’t look fully fit following knee surgery, he made Alcaraz do something mind-bending to win his second Wimbledon title, by saving three championship points on the Spaniard’s serve and forcing him to somehow win the match three games later.
Alcaraz spoke on-court afterwards of the nerves he felt in that botched service game, knowing it was Djokovic waiting to return. Beating the greatest-ever champion and escapologist in men’s tennis, having just coughed up championship points, took all the cojones of his tennis trifecta, alongside his cabeza and corazon.
When Sinner — another man who has eased the post-Big Three transition — won the Australian Open in January, Djokovic again played a big part in its significance. To win the title, Sinner had to beat Djokovic, a 10-time champion, in the semifinal. And to even get to that point, Sinner had had to undergo an apparent character transformation, brought about by beating Djokovic in singles and doubles in an epic Davis Cup tie a couple of months earlier.
With Federer retired, Nadal unable to compete properly for the last two years, and Andy Murray about to retire, Djokovic has played a big part in ensuring the sanctity of winning a slam. When Alcaraz won his first Wimbledon title last year, he had to do so in nearly five hours, beating a seven-time champion and statistically the best male player in history in the process. Beating an off-colour Marat Safin, or qualifier Martin Verkerk, this was not (sorry Thomas Johansson and Juan Carlos Ferrero).
GO DEEPER
Tears, pre-announcements, vanishing into thin air: The new rules of tennis retirement
Alcaraz is the man who has defined the last couple of years on the men’s side — the period post-Nadal being a force at the majors. Alcaraz has won four majors in this time, beating Djokovic in two of those, and Sinner before the final in the others — though one was before Sinner had fully emerged. That was the 2022 U.S. Open, when aged just 19, Alcaraz showed that he wasn’t prepared to wait his turn for a slam, like some players had perhaps been doing subconsciously while Nadal and Djokovic were hoovering them up in the previous few years.
Sinner and Alcaraz have refused to wait their turn to win tennis’s biggest titles (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
In New York in September 2022, with no Djokovic because he hadn’t been vaccinated against COVID-19 and a half-fit Nadal, it was the supremely gifted Alcaraz who grabbed his chance. He beat Casper Ruud in the final, the three-time major runner-up who lost his finals to Nadal, Alcaraz, and then Djokovic. The previous year, Daniil Medvedev — the player of that in-between generation who has both done the most to disrupt things and been most stifled by the trio of Djokovic, Alcaraz and Sinner — managed to beat the Serbian to win the title.
GO DEEPER
Daniil Medvedev beat the best player in the world at Wimbledon. Then he had to beat another
When imagining a Big Three successor, it would have been tricky to conjure up a more perfect option than Alcaraz: the charismatic, creative prodigy who has emerged in the last couple of years. He is the youngest man, at 21, to win a major on all three surfaces, before on Sunday becoming just the sixth player in Open Era history to do the Roland Garros-Wimbledon double. He doesn’t turn 22 until next May and could complete the career Grand Slam at January’s Australian Open, three years younger than anyone has ever done it.
Alcaraz wowed Centre Court during this year’s Wimbledon final (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
After losing to Alcaraz on Sunday, Djokovic said he couldn’t feel too downhearted because he’d given everything but had been beaten by an opponent who was superior in every area on the day. “It was all about him. He was the dominant force,” Djokovic said.
His recent injury was undoubtedly a factor in this, but zooming out it feels like an appropriate description of what has happened in men’s tennis over the last couple of years as well. Alcaraz has not been gifted this; he has wrestled supremacy from Djokovic’s vice-like grip to emerge as the dominant force on the ATP Tour alongside Djokovic and Sinner, beating them both and losing to them both along the way.
His successes, like Sinner’s in Australia, feel all the more satisfying as a result.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
