Emerson Phillips
Imagine if Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Bobby Jones were contemporaries and all three were in their playing prime at roughly the same time for a stretch of, say, 20 years. The three best players in golf history competing for majors and the title of golf’s GOAT (greatest of all time) year after year would be a huge deal in the world of sports, no?
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Well that’s what pro tennis has had going on for years now, and not enough people are talking about it.
The three best players in the history of professional tennis are Spain’s Rafael Nadal, Switzerland’s Roger Federer, and Serbia’s Novak Djokovic – they’ve been competing against one another for the title of tennis’ greatest player of all time for years now. And they’re writing one of the most incredible, long-running stories in sports history.
This past weekend in Paris, Nadal won the French Open – the only grand slam played on clay courts – for the 14th time. Nadal is the “King of Clay” by a wide margin. It’s also his 22nd career grand slam title, which moves him two slams ahead of Federer and Djokovic for most slam wins all-time. Fed and Joker currently have won 20 slams apiece.
To fully understand the magnitude of the career accomplishments of tennis’ Big 3, just consider that, before Rafa, Fed and Joker came along, Pete Sampras was #1 on the all-time slams won list with 14. But now the Big 3 have left Sampras in the dust, historically speaking.
The Big 3 are far and away the greatest players in tennis history, and nobody else even comes close.
And the margin among the Big 3 is razor thin. At the start of this year, all three were tied with 20 career grand slam victories. Nadal, 36, won the Australian Open to begin the year, and his win at the French this past Sunday puts him halfway to the “calendar slam” – winning all four grand slam events in the same year. (Rod Laver won the tennis calendar slam in 1969, he’s the only male to do it. Steffi Graf is the only female tennis player to win the calendar slam, in 1988. And FYI, Bobby Jones is the only golfer ever to win the calendar slam, he did it in 1930 – in fact when Jones won it in golf, that’s when the phrase “grand slam” was first conceived.)
Djokovic was forced to sit out the Australian this year because he’s unvaccinated for COVID-19.
So as of the writing of this story, Nadal is the GOAT. But the complete story is sill being written and will continue in just a few weeks at the next grand slam tournament, Wimbledon
Djokovic is a six-time Wimbledon champion and has won the last three titles on the grass there and five of the last seven. He beat Federer in an epic final two years ago, winning the first-ever fifth-set tiebreaker in Wimbledon finals history – Federer had match points that day but couldn’t close the deal. Just last year, Joker’s bid to win the calendar slam evaporated when he lost the U.S. Open final to Russian Daniil Medvedev.
But Federer, in his own right, is an eight-time Wimbledon champion – he won five titles in a row there from 2003-2007. In 2008, he lost his bid for a record sixth straight when Nadal beat him in the greatest tennis match ever played. (With all due respect to Bjorn Borg’s 5-set win over John McEnroe in 1980 – don’t take our word for it, check out the documentary film ‘Strokes of Genius’ and see for yourself, if you didn’t watch the ’08 final live.)
Federer, however, is still recovering from knee surgery that he underwent last year and, at age 40, will not play Wimbledon this year. He last won Wimbledon in 2017 and there’s been plenty of speculation that he may not win another slam. Even though he had match points to beat Joker in the 2020 Wimbledon final.
Nadal has won Wimbledon twice, but we’re still not certain Rafa will play Wimbledon this year. He’s has been playing all year with a chronic foot injury, and he’s still two-for-two in the slams this year.
“I am going to be in Wimbledon if my body is ready to be in Wimbledon. Wimbledon is not a tournament that I want to miss,” Nadal said immediately after beating eighth-seeded Norwegian Casper Rudd in straight sets in the French final on Sunday.
The fortnight at Wimbledon runs June 27-July 10.
