Outside of the 2012 Men’s Tennis season, in which we saw Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Rafa Nadal all win Grand Slam Championships, the last time we had seen four different players win a major in the same year was back in 2003.
That year we were lucky enough to not only look Andre Agassi take home the final Slam of his career at the Australian Open, Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero and American Andy Roddick win their one and only Grand Slam titles at Roland Garros and Flushing Meadows but also witness a young Federer win his first of seventeen after dismissing Mark Philippoussis in straight sets at Wimbledon.
Pretty impressive stuff but it fails in comparison to the Class of 2012. Djokovic kicked off the year in style with his third consecutive Slam and fourth in fifth tries with his victory Down Under. Nadal surpassed Bjorn Borg as the most decorated winner in the history of the French Open, after hoisting La Coupe des Mousquetaires over his head for the seventh time in eight years.
Federer won, at least for the moment, what could very well be the final Major of his illustrious career at the All England Club in early July and Murray rounded out the season with his first…thanks to a memorable performance in the finale of the US Open. While it may have been a year of four “different” champions, it was nothing like 2003. It may look a little different on paper but it was still sheer domination from the best players in the game.
Things unfolded in slightly different manner in 2014 and it has many wondering if the end of an era has truly arrived in men’s game. Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic opened and closed the year with the first Grand Slam victories of their inconsistent careers, while Nadal and Djokovic continued on their winning ways in France and England but neither one was anywhere near their usual dominant selves.
After a solid decade of the Roger, Rafa and Novak Show, the masses appear to be ready to turn the page on what has arguably been the greatest run in all of sport over the last ten years. Obviously, all three of these guys are getting older and have put a ton of miles on their bodies over the last number of years but let’s be honest here…they are still the ones to beat.
Wawrinka has shown flashes of brilliance but has generally seen his level of play fall somewhere between good to downright awful for much of the year. Cilic looked unbeatable in New York over the last few days of the 2014 US Open and has shown signs of improvement for much of the summer but his year on the whole has been uneven at best. Kei Nishikori is coming off the best run of his career and has had a fairly good season but injuries and consistency are still an issue. As wonderful as his Flushing Meadows experience was, the twenty-five year old was bounced in the first round at the French Open and could only reach the Round of Sixteen in Australia and England.
While Canada’s Milos Raonic and Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov took another step or two in their individual developments, highlighted by their appearances in the semi-finals at Wimbledon, they continue to struggle with the pressure that comes with trying to beat the premier players in the game. Tomas Berdych has always been a non-entity at Grand Slams and David Ferrer wins matches but simply doesn’t have the necessary tools to hang with the big boys when it matters most.
Unless Cilic can show he can maintain the level of play he displayed over the final three rounds of the just completed US Open, are there really any other names that could possibly push the likes of Djokovic, Federer and Nadal aside during the coming year? Anything is possible but don’t count on it. The days of complete and utter dominance may be a thing of the past but expecting any one of the Big Three to be anything other than the very best players in the game would be a major mistake.
