How Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner leapfrogged the generation after Federer, Nadal and Djokovic to conquer tennis

Mint

8 hours ago

When Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner slugged it out for hours at the Roland Garros final in Paris last month, aside from the quality of play, the intensity of shot-making deep into the fifth set and sheer unpredictability, another aspect became strikingly clear.
Sinner-Alcaraz have lapped an entire generation of tennis players, leaving them squished between two eras of dominance.
In the first Grand Slam final between two men born in the 2000s, Alcaraz, 22, saved three match points to beat 23-year-old Sinner 4-6, 6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (10-2) at the French Open, two weeks ago. The quality of the match was such that player-turned-analyst John McEnroe told TNT Sports: 'I'm saying Sinner and Alcaraz against (Rafael) Nadal on clay—you would make a serious argument with both guys that they would be favoured to beat Nadal at his best."
It was expected that when the greatest generation of male tennis players, including Roger Federer, Nadal and Novak Djokovic, leave the sport, the next gen to take over would be the one immediately after. Mathematically, it meant players born in the 1990s, after the Big Three, who are all children of the 1980s.
Federer quit the sport in 2022, Nadal last year. Djokovic is battling it out a little longer, while chasing his 25th Grand Slam singles title. But his fiercest challengers are 15 years or more younger, while it looks increasingly likely that the 1990s generation would simply miss the boat or—to use a tennis analogy—miss their shot at it.
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Daniil Medvedev, Alexander Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas—and to a lesser extent Andrey Rublev, Taylor Fritz and Casper Ruud—waited in vain for too long, and seem to have been simply left behind.
Only Medvedev, 29, has won a Grand Slam, the US Open in 2021 when he denied Djokovic a calendar Grand Slam. Another player, Dominic Thiem, won in New York too in 2020 amid pandemic absentees. But he retired last year, at age 30, having been defeated by injuries and exhaustion from trying to beat the Big Three over the years.
The Big Three—Federer, Nadal, Djokovic—won 66 Grand Slams in the space of about two decades in an astonishing domination of the men's game. Peers Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka got a few in between.
World numbers one and two, Sinner and Alcaraz, have equally shared the last six Grand Slam titles, looking good enough to continue with the trend, except for Djokovic who still hunts for that elusive Slam which will put him clear of any male or female player ever to get to that number.
Even as the products of the 2000s race ahead, the men of the 1990s find it harder and harder to catch up, such has been the evolution in skill, speed and fitness over just a few years.
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For instance, No.11 ranked Medvedev, 29, has a 2-6 win-loss record against Alcaraz and has not beaten him in their last four matches since 2023. He is a more respectable 7-8 against Sinner but has lost the last three times they played.
Tsitsipas, down in rankings to 25, has never beaten Alcaraz in six attempts, but is up 6-3 against Sinner. He has been in two Grand Slam finals, 2021 Roland Garros—losing to Djokovic in five sets—and 2023 Australian Open—losing to Djokovic in three.
'I feel like the line-up right now is much more difficult than it was back then (in 2021, when he lost in the French final)," Tsitsipas said in a news conference at this year's Roland Garros. 'Players are so much more mature. Shots have changed. Players have second forehands in this very moment. They are playing with two forehands almost. I have to adapt my game."
'It's growing a lot in intensity and physically it has never been in a position the way it is now. I see constant evolution and constant growth in terms of the sport how players are evolving."
'Tennis was different before Jannik and Carlos came around the corner," he added.
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Zverev has a 4-3 win-loss against Sinner but has lost the two times they have played in the last two years. He is 6-5 against Alcaraz, giving him the best resume against the (new) Big Two. None of these matches have been on grass, and Zverev's numbers on the surface are not his best. For instance, he has never been past the fourth round of Wimbledon, which begins this year on 30 June.
He has been in two Grand Slam finals as well, losing to Sinner in straight sets at this year's Australian Open and to Alcaraz at last year's Roland Garros. Ranked third in the world, Zverev is probably best placed to get a major title, though it may not happen next month.
'I wish I didn't have the three greatest players of all time for the first 10 years of my career because I think I would have won one or two Slam by now, but at the same time it was a privilege playing them…" Zverev said in a press conference at this year's French Open.
'Breaking into the top 5, 10 was more difficult back then because (the top) four spots were taken at all time. I don't see that now. Jannik is very dominant, Carlos is very dominant."
If Thiem, Medvedev and the others waited for the Big Three to move on before they could have a legitimate chance at winning major titles, they were following a precedent. Ivan Lendl, who was the next-in-waiting to John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg in the early 1980s, lost half-a-dozen times in majors to one of these players till 1985, when the three finished playing. Lendl took five of the next nine Grand Slams.
In 2020 itself, Tim Henman, a commentator on BBC, had said that the younger players (referring to the 1990s born) would have to be patient, but 'wary of the younger players coming up behind them," words that have turned out to be prophetic.
After losing to Nadal in the 2021 Italian Open, Djokovic had said—perhaps in jest, perhaps scathingly, 'The Next Gen young people? Me, Rafa (Nadal) and Roger (Federer) are reinventing the Next Gen. We are the Next Gen."
He may have been partly right, in that their era blurred the lines between generations.
Arun Janardhan is a Mumbai-based journalist who covers sports, business leaders and lifestyle.
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