What is a dynasty in tennis?
- Thomas Dev
- 6 minutes ago
- 5 min read
When sports teams lift the championship trophy, immediately, even before the last piece of confetti can hit the ground, we start talking about the D word.
No, not that D word, I'm talking about 'Dynasty'.
It's as if we can't allow the team to enjoy the moment before we start discussing the future.
We essentially dismiss the notion that winning one title is an accomplishment, and if the team doesn't sustain its success and turn it into a dynasty, it's a failure.
In team sports, it's as if we have all agreed that in order to be a dynasty, three is the magic number.
Whether it be a three-peat and the team rolls them off consecutively, or the team wins three premierships in a five-to-six-year window. If a team wins three titles, we call it a dynasty.
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As sports fans, it's our way of elevating a club above the rest. If you win one, you're a good team, but more of a one-hit wonder; two, and you're great, but three is when you become legendary.
For years to come, the dynasty team will be a measuring stick; old heads who grew up with the side won't allow any modern-day comparisons, and no one will ever let you forget just how good they are.
To be a part of a dynasty is something special.
We remember the 90s for the dominance of the Chicago Bulls in the NBA. In Australia, the early 2000s were all about the Brisbane Lions, then followed by Hawthorn, Geelong and Richmond over the next 20 years in the AFL.
The New England Patriots had a chokehold over the NFL between 2001-2018 when Tom Brady was leading the charge, while football has had many teams across Europe dominate for years on end.
Nearly every sport has had a dynasty, but what about tennis?
Well, over the last 25 years, we've been treated to the same names winning all of the majors, but that's the thing. You see, unlike other sports, we don't have a clear (albeit unwritten) guideline as to what a dynasty is.
There's not just one trophy to compete for; each year, there are four.
So, can we call it a dynasty when the same player wins at least one major each year for three years straight, or three in a five-to-six-year span?
Then would that mean we have several dynasties running concurrently?
I'm not sure we can classify that as a dynasty, but for the sake of experimenting, if we were to take the last 25 years of men's tennis, we can see across each major, there have been several 'dynasties'.
Starting off with the Australian Open, Andre Agassi won three out of four to open up the 2000s, and Roger Federer then did the exact same thing from 2004-2007. After that, the big three rotated through until Novak Djokovic won three in a row starting in 2011.
He'd then win another six between 2015-2023, and now Jannik Sinner has potentially started his own Australian Open dynasty by clinching the last two.
So, using this method, we've only had four proper 'dynasties' in the Australian Open over the past quarter of a century.
The French Open, as you'd expect, is a little different as there is only one player who has won three or more in the span of five to six years, and of course, you know who I’m talking about.
From 2005-2022, Rafael Nadal won Roland-Garros a whopping 14 times, so it's no surprise that the only real candidate for a dynasty here is the Spaniard.
During the same time span, Wimbledon had just the two dynasties with Federer winning six in seven years, including five in a row between 2003-2007. While the other belongs to Djokovic, winning four in a row from 2018-2022, and had it not been for the cancelled Covid year, there is every chance he would have won in 2020 too.
With the US Open having the greatest variety of winners over the last 25 years, it should come as no surprise that there is only one player who qualifies here and that again is Federer, where just like Wimbledon, he'd win five in a row, this time spanning from 2004-2008.
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So, all up, that means there are eight total 'major dynasties' in men's tennis over the last 25 years.
Overall, eight in 25 years isn't many, but only counting dominance in each individual major sells some of these athletes short and doesn't really give off the same sort of vibe as a dynasty in other sports.
So, what's another way of looking at it then?
Anyone can agree that winning two out of the four majors in a year is incredibly impressive, but as a one-off? Still not worthy of calling it a dynasty.
If we were to set the parameters, however, as a dynasty being a player winning two or more majors in the same year and achieving that at least three times over the span of three to six years, to me, that closely resembles what dynasties look like in other sports.
Using the same timeframe between 2000-2025, we can see that by using this metric, there have been just two 'dynasties' on the men's side of things.
You won't win any money for guessing which two men over the last 25 years hit this benchmark, as it's fairly obvious, but from 2004-2009, Federer won 13 majors, and on three occasions, he even won three out of the four majors on offer in a year.
The second one being Djokovic, where his 'dynasty' actually ran over a nine-year span from 2015-2023. During that time, he won at least two majors a year on six occasions.
In 2020 and 2022, Djokovic failed to meet the criteria of winning at least two; however, every other year in this span, he hit the mark, therefore it still counts as one continuous dynasty.
Overall, I think this second method is a better way to manufacture a tennis dynasty as it's a much harder criterion to achieve, but it also requires dominance over several majors and not just winning the same event over and over like Nadal has with the French Open.
It could be argued, though, that dynasties aren't possible in tennis due to the format we live in, and instead of having the criteria of winning a certain number of majors over a three-to-six-year period, we have what's called 'eras'.
While a dynasty and era sound the same, in sports, when you refer to a period of time as a certain player or team's era, it means they were dominant during that time, but there's less focus on how many trophies they won.
An era also means that it doesn't have to be focused on one specific player or team and can be shared, which, in the case of men's tennis, seems like it could actually be perfect.
This means that from 2003, when Federer won his first major, until 2023, when Djokovic won his last, can be classified as 'the big three' era, as these two, as well as Nadal, all dominated.
It does give a broader look at the time, but also encapsulates exactly what the 20-year period was.
By using eras, you could now say we're in the Sinner and Alcaraz era, which feels like it could go on for some time.
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