San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Who’s likely winner of men’s title? You get three guesses
WIMBLEDON, England — As the start of Wimbledon approaches, two recent trends capture the completely disparate states of men’s and women’s tennis at the moment.
Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have combined to win the past 10 Grand Slam tournaments, while nine women collected trophies in that span — including a halfdozen firsttime major winners.
And consider this: There hasn’t been a firsttime men’s champ at any Slam tournament since Marin Cilic at the 2014 U.S. Open.
“If you start looking at the stats,” said Kevin Anderson, the runnerup to Djokovic at Wimbledon last year, “it’s really unbelievable.”
At the All England Club, where play begins Monday, the superiority of that select group of men is particularly pronounced. One needs to go back to 2002 to find a men’s champion outside of the quartet of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Andy Murray, who will be playing only doubles this time as he works his way back from hip surgery.
Since Federer claimed his initial Grand Slam title at Wimbledon in 2003, he has won the grasscourt tournament a men’srecord eight times. Djokovic owns four trophies at Wimbledon; Nadal has two. They rank 13 in overall majors for men, with Federer atop the list at 20, Nadal next at 18 and Djokovic third at 15.
“We were happy to win one. Now, if you win one, you’re a loser,” said Pat Cash, the 1987 champion at Wimbledon and twice the runnerup at the Australian Open. “It’s absolutely mindboggling to see the standard of tennis that these guys are playing at this age. And the
motivation. That’s the thing: the motivation. Once I won a Grand Slam, I was (thinking): ‘That’s enough. I’ll go hang out with my family.’ They’re motivated to keep going.”
Federer turns 38 in August, Nadal is 33 and Djokovic 32.
For a while now, the questions have been: How long will the Big Three continue to rule the sport? And: Which younger player will make a move and grab a Grand Slam title?
“You’re looking at, to me, the three greatest players that have ever lived, playing at the same time,” said John McEnroe, an eighttime major champion who is now an ESPN commentator. “They’re extremely hungry, which is an amazing quality at that age. They’ve psyched out opponents, I believe. And they’re better.”
That same dynamic was in play for years in women’s tennis, but with just one player dominating: Serena Williams. She accumulated title after title, only occasionally facing much resistance while raising her count to 23 singles majors, more than anyone in the Open era.
Williams took a break from the tour after winning the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant and, not coincidentally, that was the start of the current anyonecanwin stretch, in which Ash Barty, Naomi Osaka, Simona Halep, Caroline Wozniacki, Sloane Stephens and Jelena Ostapenko each won her first major championship.
Barty’s rise to No. 1 in the ranking after her French Open victory earlier this month highlighted another way in which men’s and women’s tennis have been different: She was the 17th player to sit atop the WTA since 2005. Only four men — Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray — have led the ATP in those years.
Who will raise the trophies in two weeks? It would not be all that shocking to see just about anyone in the women’s draw.
Any man outside of the Big Three would cause quite a stir.
“It would be highly surprising if it’s not one of those three guys at this stage,” McEnroe said. “I think a lot of us want to be surprised and see who could step up.”