POWER OF 3: FEDERER VS NADAL VS DJOKOVIC
By all accounts, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic get along well with each other. Federer and Nadal, particularly, talk about working for each other’s charitable causes and academies, and about sharing special moments off the court. That is all very well, in a cutesy heartwarming way. Sport history likes to remember friendships between compatriots and rivals. Jessie Owens was famously given tips and advice by Luz Long in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, as Owens, much to Adolf Hitler’s chagrin, went on to win four gold medals including in the long jump, in which Luz Long got silver. The two – Owens and Long (not Hitler and either of them) – remained friends until Long was killed in action in the second World War during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. Their friendship was once hailed as a beacon of hope for what sport can do.
But much more than tales of camaraderie between competitors – Ian Botham and Viv Richards, Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert – sporting history relishes, venerates, good, old-fashioned rivalries. In individual sport, these are largely of two kinds – ones that assume grandeur because of their scale and the sheer burden of history they carry, and ones that are riveting to follow simply because of their gruelling unpredictability.
It’s no secret that world tennis is witnessing, as it has been for a better part of the last decade, the greatest rivalry ever seen in individual sport. This is no longer a topic of debate because of the unprecedented numbers attached to it. Federer has won 20 Grand Slams, Nadal 17 and Djokovic 15 – that’s 52, or 13 years’ worth of Grand Slams, between the three of them. Roy Emerson’s record of 12 Grand Slams stood for 33 years before Pete Sampras equalled it in 1999 and surpassed it in 2000. For Sampras’s mark of 14 titles, which was supposed to stand for the next three decades, to be the eclipsed in 17 years by three players who also competed against each other while doing so, suggests both intensity and magnitude hitherto unthinkable. But the joy of the rivalry lies not in its significance or its place in history. It is down to how riveting and unpredictable the contest has been, fuelled perhaps by the fact that it involves not two but three protagonists.
It harks back to another great rivalry from five decades ago when they – Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman – were kings. The world of professional boxing never has, perhaps never will, see three characters as formidable and colourful as the three hall-of-fame world champions donning the gloves in the same decade.
But the Frazier-Ali-Foreman battles were different from Federer-NadalDjokovic because they were bridged by Ali, the greatest showman ever to walk the Earth, between a Frazier on the decline and a Foreman on the rise. The Fight of the Century (Ali vs Frazier, 1971) and Rumble in the Jungle (Ali vs Foreman, 1974) were the real centrepieces of the rivalry. Thrilla at Manilla (Ali vs Frazier, 1975) was a kind of final flourish from Smokin’ Joe, who went on to lose again in the Battle of the Gladiators (Foreman vs Frazier, 1976). It didn’t really witness the three going at each other at the peak of their powers the way Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have.
Having grown up in the ’80s, what we have today reminds me of the tennis rivalry from my childhood – not nearly as great or significant, but just as much fun – between Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg. The three, between 1986 and 1990, made it impossible to pick a favourite between them. If Becker would beat Lendl, Edberg would beat Becker, Lendl would beat Edberg, or some such combination.
At Wimbledon 1988, Becker defeated Lendl in the semi-final only to lose to Edberg in the final. The following year, Becker beat Lendl in the semi-final and Edberg in the final. But at the Australian Open in 1991, Lendl beat Edberg in the semi-final and Becker in the final. During a seven-year period between 1984 and 1991, the head-to-head between Becker and Edberg was 18-10, between Lendl and Edberg 14-13, and between Lendl and Becker 11-10. When Mats Wilander suddenly entered the mix in 1998, winning three of the four Grand Slams by defeating all three, there was mayhem.
Tennis, in fact individual sport as a whole, was spoiling for a fight of this nature for nearly two decades. Until it was replicated, and then surpassed, by the mother of all rivalries we have today.
Federer vs Nadal vs Djokovic: dwell on it, conjure with it, cherish it. There has never been anything like it.