The golden era of tennis is over. Twenty-three-time major champion Serena Williams has been retired for over a year. So has Roger Federer (20 majors). Rafael Nadal (22 majors) has been injured since January. Novak Djokovic (24 majors) is the last of the all-time-greats to slow down, but without his rivals in Federer and Nadal, his greatness has fewer opportunities to shine.
Still, a tennis tour without these players at their best is not struggling for popularity. When the 19-year-old American Coco Gauff won the U.S. Open final over top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka earlier this month, 3.4 million viewers watched on ESPN, a record-high figure for a women’s major final. The men’s final between Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev lagged behind at 2.3 million, but even that number was better than the men’s finals at the U.S. Open since 2019.
Each tour has something different to offer at the moment. On the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association), the top five players — Sabalenka, Iga Świątek (who just lost the number one ranking to Sabalenka after a lengthy reign), Gauff, Jessica Pegula and Elena Rybakina — can all be beaten by each other. Each major tournament this year has had a different winner. Quarterfinals and semifinals are regularly exciting because the level of play is high and there is rarely an obvious favorite.
The men’s side seriously lacks depth — there is a big drop-off after Djokovic and #2-ranked Carlos Alcaraz — but when those two match up, it’s the best show in tennis. Djokovic, the consensus pick for best player of all time despite being 36 years old, is still a match for the stunningly talented Alcaraz, who is 20. They played three matches this year, all on different court surfaces, and each match was thoroughly compelling. Djokovic is a grandmaster of the game, having long perfected each shot, and Alcaraz is a speed demon who regularly hits forehands at over 100 miles per hour. The athletic feats in the matchup are stunning.
Tennis relies heavily on stars, larger-than-life players who can sell the sport to general sports fans as well as tennis diehards. Williams, Federer, and Nadal were such players. But the current tour, if not completely filling that void, has more than enough stars to get by. Gauff is one such star — she is almost unbelievably mature for 19, she rose to prominence when she was 15 and she has the American audience firmly behind her. She is the fastest player on the WTA, propelling her to make highlight-reel retrievals in nearly every match she plays. Alcaraz is a star as well; his athletic gifts are easy to appreciate visually when he crushes a forehand at 109 mph or hits a winner with his back facing the court.
That said, what made the Golden Era so spectacular was the rivalries: Serena-Venus, Federer-Nadal, Nadal-Djokovic. Watching a historically great player pulverize a hopeless challenger is amazing for the skill on display, but from a competitive standpoint, it can get old fast. Legends are at their best when they are pushed. On the men’s side, besides Alcaraz, no one can really push Djokovic to be at his greatest, which means many of Djokovic’s matches fall flat. The WTA is much more competitive at the top, but there are so many key players that a singular rivalry has not had the chance to emerge above the rest.
Still, not every decade of tennis is going to be like the 2010s. Holding the current generation to that standard is going to end in disappointment; we should instead let today’s players grow into their best selves. Gauff failed to beat Świątek (a four-time major champion and budding all-time-great) or even win a set in her first six tries, but pulled a huge upset in Cincinnati that suggested the seemingly one-sided matchup could one day be a great rivalry. Djokovic may be at the tail end of his career, but he has already played four fantastic matches with Alcaraz and is showing no signs of slowing.
The worst-case scenario in many fans’ minds is a tennis tour staffed with little talent and no standouts. Unpredictability among great players — like from 2008 to 2014 when Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray would regularly fill a semifinal lineup but it was rarely clear who would win a tournament — is thrilling, whereas unpredictability among the mediocre is tiresome. The current tour has demonstrated itself to have fantastic players who could potentially become legends one day. Swiatek and Alcaraz have both won multiple major tournaments in their early 20s; now, Gauff has won her first in her teens. Watching these young players build their careers over the next decade is reason enough by itself to follow the tour.
A renaissance of the glorious rivalries of the late 2000s and early 2010s is unlikely, but tennis is doing just fine anyway. There is much to look forward to at the major tournaments in 2024, and anything that reminds us of the Golden Era will just be a bonus. For all the fear of the future when legendary athletes wind down their careers, sports have a way of being fun no matter what.
