Sport, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Sometimes, there is a brief interval between eras that feels like a vacuum, when one generation has gone or is lingering without impact, and the next is yet to establish itself. Always looking for the next Big Thing, we settle on some names hoping these would head the new era.
Ironically, as soon as such players establish themselves, the search is on for their successors. Doubtless, tennis fans are already asking: who after Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner? Alcaraz is 22, Sinner, 24.
When he won the 1985 Wimbledon at 17, Boris Becker was younger than the junior champion Leonardo Lavalle. When Michael Chang won the French Open four years later, he was even younger. But neither led an era. The essence is not in statistics, it is in aesthetics. In the way a player occupies our imagination, not just our television screens. Sport is a palimpsest, each era writing over the last. Björn Borg’s backhand is in Novak Djokovic’s muscle memory, Roger Federer’s forehand whispers to young players honing their craft. John McEnroe’s touch lives on through Alcaraz.
The Borg-McEnroe era ended with Borg’s retirement at 26. McEnroe tried hard to persuade the Swede to return. Great players need great rivalry. “I felt there was a void,” McEnroe said later, “I felt it was up to me to manufacture my own intensity thereafter.” This is from Tim Adams’ On Being John McEnroe (2003) which, along with John McPhee’s Levels of the Game (1969), is among the finest books on tennis.
Three for the price of two
Essayist William Hazlitt observed that prose style is the most accurate gauge of manners, morals, and the direction society is taking. Each era of sport awaits the writer who captures it close-up. We are yet to see the definitive book on the Big Three. For a combination of statistics and aesthetics, the era of Federer, Djokovic and Rafael Nadal who collectively won 66 of 84 Grand Slam titles, will be hard to beat. Federer wasn’t all touch and grace, Nadal wasn’t all power and pace. Each had elements of the other two in some degree. We got three for the price of two, unlike the generation that venerated Pete Sampras-Andre Agassi, Chris Evert-Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf-Monica Seles, or Margaret Court-Billie Jean King, Rod Laver-Ken Rosewall.
Jannik Sinner after his win at the China Open tournament in Beijing on October 1.
A Serb, a Spaniard and a Swiss ruling the game is also the story of a sport moving away from its U.S.-Australia-Sweden moorings. Now we have Sinner, the first Italian to be world No. 1, born and brought up in the Alpine province of South Tyrol most of whose inhabitants are, like Sinner, German-speaking ethnic Austrians. Sinner has said he feels “100 percent Italian”, even if he grew up speaking German. Future historians will see the new era as one of fluid nationalities, although that’s not new in tennis. Czech star Jaroslav Drobný won Wimbledon in 1954 as an Egyptian citizen, and returned years later as a British player.
The show must go on
Already, the new generation has a moniker: Sincaraz. No one called the earlier generation Fedalvic. That would have been an inelegant word to associate with those champions.
Carlos Alcaraz won the 2025 Japan Open, also an ATP 500 tennis tournament, in Tokyo on September 30.
Not often is the end of an era the beginning of another. In 2023, Djokovic lost the Wimbledon final to Alcaraz; the next year, for the first time since 2002, none of the Big Three won a single Grand Slam title. The transition was complete. The odds of Djokovic adding to his record 24 titles have reduced appreciably. Yet, the fact that he made it to the semi-finals of all four Grand Slams this year might suggest that Sincaraz face little competition in the immediate future.
There is, too, the Aryna Sabalenka-Iga Swiatek generation, although among women the domination isn’t as marked. Swiatek is 24, Sabalenka 27, and they are the only players to have retained a Grand Slam title since Serena Williams repeated her U.S. Open win in 2014. In the 2015-25 period, only five players apart from the Big Three — Stan Wawrinka, Dominic Thiem, Daniil Medvedev, Alcaraz and Sinner — have won a Grand Slam title, while 20 women have done so.
The obvious conclusions hold: there has not been a version of the Big Three among women. The field is more varied, women play three-setters which makes it difficult to get back into a match, and champions lose more regularly. Women’s champions have come from Italy, Germany, Spain, Latvia, Denmark, Japan, Poland, Romania, Canada, Czech Republic, Belarus besides the U.S., Australia and Britain. The range is good for the sport.
Hitting on the rise
According to the International Tennis Federation’s 2024 Global Tennis Report, more people are playing tennis than ever before, the figure crossing 100 million for the first time. Identifying with a home champion or looking up to a universal figure like Federer stirs ambition anywhere.
The rise in numbers is significant. Tennis was once the preserve of those who could afford leisure. It kept social divisions intact. It was a game played on manicured grass. You sliced your backhand and cucumber with equal delicacy.
Alcaraz (in pink) hugs Sinner at men’s singles final of 2025 US Open championships at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, New York.
Delicacy is not a word you would use in connection with a modern professional game. Robust, perhaps, tough, uncompromising. If Alcaraz or Sinner sliced cucumber the way they sliced their backhand, it would not be wise to sit across them at the food tent.
After his U.S. Open victory, Alcaraz told Sinner, “I’m seeing you more than my family.” Sinner, fearing he’s becoming predictable, says he’s changing his game. A new era comes with new promises. None more delicious than Alcaraz continuing to see more of Sinner.
The writer’s latest book is Why Don’t You Write Something I Might Read?
Published – October 02, 2025 01:29 pm IST
