It was standing room only at Carlos Alcaraz’s press conference last Wednesday at the Caja Magica, where the Spaniard announced he was withdrawing from the Madrid Open due to two separate injuries in his right and left legs.
After winning Monte Carlo and reaching the final in Barcelona in consecutive weeks, playing 10 matches in 12 days, the four-time Grand Slam champion’s body had had enough.
With the French Open just four weeks away, it made sense that Alcaraz would choose to sit out the Madrid Open and deal with his right adductor and left hamstring issues.
Last year, a forearm injury limited Alcaraz to just one clay-court tournament in the build-up to the French Open, forcing him out of Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Rome. He still went on to triumph in Paris, defeating Alexander Zverev in the final of the French Open.
The five biggest clay-court tournaments of the spring last season – Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, and Roland Garros – were won by five different players.
This clay swing so far, Alcaraz won Monte Carlo and Holger Rune won Barcelona. Neither will win Madrid this fortnight, with the former withdrawing from the tournament and the latter retiring one-set into his opener with a right knee injury on Friday.
Long gone are the days where Rafael Nadal would routinely sweep four spring tournaments on the red clay – something he pulled off in nine different seasons.
Or the years where Roger Federer would run away with the last three to five tournaments of the year, then start the new season with another undefeated stretch, like that time he built a 41-match winning streak that included seven consecutive titles from August 2006 to March 2007.
Novak Djokovic once won the first 43 matches of the year (2011), suffering his first defeat of the season in the Roland Garros semi-finals early June.
In 2015, the Serb swept Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo and Rome, before reaching the French Open final (notching 27 wins in a row), then won Wimbledon. He finished that season by winning the last five tournaments, clinching all silverware from the US Open onwards.
That is just a glimpse of the kind of dominance the fabled ‘Big Three’ were able to demonstrate since they broke through on the professional circuit, all the way into their mid-30s.
Those extended unbeaten runs they pulled off required stratospheric levels of mental and physical strength, and they did it so often we almost forgot how extraordinary it all was.
As a new era in tennis unfolds, headlined by Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, it’s becoming more and more apparent just how difficult those long winning streaks put together by the ‘Big Three’ actually were.
Both Sinner and Alcaraz have shown an incredibly high caliber of tennis from a young age and have been sharing the spoils at most of the big events since the start of last season.
Sinner, who is currently serving a three-month antidoping ban, will return to action next month carrying a 21-match winning streak that started last October in Shanghai.
Alcaraz went 14 matches unbeaten on two occasions, in 2022 and 2023.
Still, it’s difficult to imagine the current generation producing the kind of runs we witnessed during the ‘Big Three’ era, for a number of reasons.
Former world No. 1 Andy Murray, who is currently coaching Djokovic, believes extending ATP Masters 1000 events to 12-14 days as opposed to their typical one-week slots has made it harder for players to sweep such tournaments back-to-back.
“I think just because of the longer events now, I think it's harder to do that,” Murray said in an interview with Arab News and Tennis Majors in Madrid this week.
“I preferred how it was before because, it probably allowed you to play more matches in a condensed period, but then you had more time to rest and recover, whereas now the rest and recovery happens at tournaments and that's not the normal rest.
“Physically and mentally, it's not the same because you come into the courts, you practice, you're around lots of people.
“As much as I know it's nice like to be here playing but it's a stressful environment when you have lots of people and cameras and everything watching your practices rather than having a quiet environment where you can work on things and practice in peace is a bit different.”
Grigor Dimitrov was a ‘Big Three’ contemporary for many years and is still competing at a high level at the age of 33, currently ranked 16 in the world.
The Bulgarian believes the tour right now is “taxing on the body”, irrespective of how old or young you are.
“These two-week events, it's just difficult however you look at it and there's always going to be a moment where you just can't go on,” said the former world No. 3.
“It's not because you're weak or anything like that, it's just you don't have it in you and I think each one of the players should, to a certain extent, recognize that and be very mindful of how they're positioning themselves in terms of scheduling their play.
“It's taxing on the body, I don't think there's any secrets around that, I think it's just purely the intensity of the competition and all that. It has changed over the course of whatever, the past 15 years, everything has changed.
“However way you look at it, players have changed, now the different generation comes through, the tournaments are longer, physically everyone is pushing themselves more, the ball is faster, strings are different, racquets are different, so you know like overall everything kind of sped up a little bit and then what can you do?”
Frances Tiafoe doesn’t think players aren’t able to sweep multiple tournaments in a row regularly has anything to do with the taxing schedule or the physical and mental issues that can arise because of it.
“I don't think it's a schedule thing. I just think it’s a level thing,” said the 27-year-old American.
“I think the level is very similar, anybody can clip anybody on a given day. I think it's exciting times. Tennis reminds me of, right now, from 2000 to 2004 or 2005. It's a window. Anybody can win Slams. Anybody can win tournaments like this. We're going to have, probably every Masters (season), there’ll probably be eight, nine winners. I'm pretty sure.
“Maybe Alcaraz and Sinner will probably get two or three. But it's an open game. I don't think anyone fears anyone. No one’s that much better than anyone, except Sinner and Alcaraz. I respect those two. But I think everybody else, if they're not playing well, they can lose.”
Tiafoe is happy to experience this kind of unpredictability on the tour.
“I lived the ‘real era’. So for me, it feels great,” he added.
“It feels great to know I can play quarters or semis, at a Slam and that's not like winning it, in a sense. Because, I'm 20, at the Australian Open (in 2019), I lose to Rafa in the quarters and in my mind, I’m like, I’m not beating Rafa. But now, you can play anyone. I really feel like at the Slams, anyone can win.”
World No. 4 Taylor Fritz believes “it’s possible” to witness wild winning streaks in this era but acknowledges the clay season is particularly tough, given the number of big events crammed within a short period of time.
There are three Masters 1000 clay tournaments scheduled within a five-week window ahead of Roland Garros.
“It speaks to how insane those guys (the ‘Big Three’) were, they could just play non-stop all the time. And it's tough to go back-to-back-to-back and just keep having big weeks, especially this time of the year, because there's a lot of big events all in a row,” said Fritz.
“There aren’t necessarily good weeks in this time of the schedule to take off. So, yeah, this is a very tough part of the year to just win, win, win, win, win. But, I mean, it just speaks to how good those guys were I guess.”
Djokovic acknowledged that he, Federer and Nadal had some dominant stretches but played down how frequent those runs came about.
When asked about Alcaraz’s withdrawal from Madrid, Djokovic was quick to note how young the Spaniard still is. Alcaraz turns 22 next week and is already a four-time major winner and an Olympics silver medallist.
“For me personally, that level of dominant tennis and achievements came when I was 23, 24 years old and then after that. So between, let's say, 23 and 33 is when it was really happening. And now Carlos is still not 23,” said the 37-year-old Djokovic, who as recently as 2023, started the season with a 15-0 run and swept Cincinnati, US Open, and the Paris Masters at the end of the year.
“We have to remember that what he has done for his age is not also normal. I'm sure that we'll see a lot of him on the big stage with trophies in the future in, whatever, 10 years, 15 years, as long as he's playing.”
Djokovic believes it’s hard to compare eras, adding: “The last 20 years was dominated mostly by the four of us (including Andy Murray), and obviously when the three of my biggest rivals retired, you can feel there's a shift, not only in terms of the generations of players that are now, all of a sudden, the main focus and attention is on them.
“But it's just, I guess it takes a little bit of time for people to accept the fact that Roger and Rafa are not playing, and Murray, and I guess one day myself, but I'm still trying to stay there and represent the older guys, the older generation. Hopefully that brings a positive effect to the tournaments and to the tour itself.”
