Is the Big Three of Men’s Tennis Losing Its Grip for Good?

Maybe, with Novak Djokovic going down in Australia — but we've seen a dip before.

Before his upset loss to Jannik Sinner on Friday morning, Novak Djokovic was riding an incredible hot streak at the Australian Open. He’d won 33 straight matches at the tournament, and had never lost in the semifinals; the lone time he hadn’t won the championship since 2018 was in 2022, and that was only because he was barred from entering the country due to being unvaccinated against COVID-19. So it will be shocking to not see Djokovic in the final with a chance to win the grand slam he’s dominated the most in his storied career.

Stranger still will be the fact that the winner — whether Sinner or Daniil Medvedev — will not be a member of the Big Three that has so thoroughly dominated men’s tennis for the past two-plus decades. One of either Djokovic, Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer has won the Australian Open in each of the past nine years, and in an astonishing 18 of the past 20. (The only exceptions were Stan Wawrinka in 2014 and Marat Safin in 2005.) While Federer is now retired and Nadal is close to it as well, Djokovic has kept the flame burning for the Big Three into their third collective decade. But all good things must eventually come to an end, and we may end up looking back on Djokovic’s rare defeat this week as a turning point of sorts.

Over the past 10 grand slams, a member of the Big Three has won only six tournaments — the smallest running count in a 10-slam span since early 2017. Here’s a breakdown of the Big Three’s dominance over time since 2004, based on how many of the previous 10 grand slams either Djokovic, Nadal or Federer won:

We have seen a dip like this before, though. After an incredible stretch starting in 2006 and extending through 2013, in which no fewer than 9 of the past 10 grand slams were won by a Big Three member at any moment in time, the 2014-16 period saw uncharacteristic cracks form in their dominance. (Somehow, Wawrinka, Andy Murray and Marin Čilić had actually begun to win some major tournaments.) But powered by a still-in-his-prime Djokovic, Nadal’s reliable dominance on clay at the French Open and a late-career resurgence from Federer, the trio reclaimed their stranglehold on the slams, going back to multiple stretches of 10 wins in 10 tournaments.

This time might be different. In addition to the career slowdowns of Federer and Nadal, Djokovic is now 36 years old — an age at which, traditionally, performance declines tend to accelerate and injury concerns rise. On the one hand, tennis observers have been asking whether the end of the Big Three era is at hand for a long time. Each time, they’ve been wrong — a fact Djokovic seems well aware of.

“This tournament hasn’t been up to my standard or criteria or the level that I would normally play or expect myself to play,” Djokovic said after losing to Sinner. "But [this] doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s beginning of the end, you know, as some people like to call it… Let’s see what happens in the rest of the season.”

Eventually, the Big Three era will give way to something else for good — whether that change starts now, or whether Djokovic can keep holding it off for a bit more time.

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Filed under: Tennis