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 their fear came from the last time male legends of the sport started to fade from view.
When Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi began 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. Juan Carlos Ferrero won his only Grand Slam the following year, as did Gaston Gaudio in 2004.
None of those one-time champions had to beat Agassi or Sampras (who played his last match in September 2002) or Federer to get their hands on the trophy.
The sport braced itself for something similar when, inevitably, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic would begin to fade.
Tennis is at its most potent when winning a major feels like finding the holy grail — something that can only be achieved by going through dark places and getting past the very best. Their multi-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.
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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.
Even in Sunday’s straight-sets defeat, when he didn’t look fully fit following that early June 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 (head) and corazon (heart).
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 play for that title, Sinner had to beat Djokovic, a 10-time champion, in the semifinals. 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 Italy vs Serbia 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, Johansson and Ferrero!).
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Alcaraz is the man who has defined the last couple of years on the men’s side — the period since Nadal stopped being a force at the majors. He 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 the latter had fully emerged. That was at 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.
In New York two years ago, with no Djokovic because he hadn’t been vaccinated against Covid-19 and only a half-fit Nadal, it was the supremely gifted Alcaraz who grabbed his chance. In the final, he beat Casper Ruud, the three-time major runner-up who has 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 Serb to win the title.
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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 past 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 his career Grand Slam at January’s Australian Open, when he’ll be three years younger than anyone who has ever done it.
After losing 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 knee 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 past 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 he 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)
