WOULD MORE PARITY BE BETTER FOR MEN'S TENNIS?
- Thomas Dev
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
When you jump onto Netflix or your streaming app of choice, it's easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of options.
Thousands of movies and TV shows are right at our fingertips, and yet in most cases, we scroll through endlessly until we give up trying to find something new, and instead settle in for a handful of episodes of a familiar favourite.
Unlike watching TV, we obviously don't get a choice as to who wins the men's tennis majors, but much like the streaming apps, there are thousands of players that many people have never heard of, and at the end of the day, it's like we're watching the same old show again.
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Since the start of 2021, there have been 18 total majors played, and to no surprise, there have only been five men who have won at least one of these.
Novak Djokovic tops them all with seven, Carlos Alcaraz has five, Jannik Sinner three, Rafael Nadal two and Daniil Medvedev with his one US Open.
In a sport where all it takes sometimes is a handful of errors in one match for everything to go pear-shaped, to have this kind of consistency over a four-and-a-half-year span is kind of crazy.
Even crazier is if you blow out the sample size to cover the last 20 years.
Since the start of 2005, there have been 82 majors played. Want to take a guess at how many different winners we've had?
I'll save you the suspense and share it's 11.
Now, to be fair, this data can easily be manipulated to suit an argument, as when you have the 'Big Three' of Nadal, Djokovic and Federer all in their peaks over this time span, it's only logical that the number of total winners is so small.
But with Nadal and Federer retired, and Djokovic now finally appearing to slow down, will we start to see some different names on the winners' lists?
Well, as the saying goes, when one window closes, another opens, and even though the 'Big Three' are out, if the last few majors are to go off, it seems like the next window is going to be dominated by the same two names.
Counting the Australian and French Opens from this year, the last two winners of every major have either been Sinner or Alcaraz, except for the 2023 US Open, won by Djokovic.
With Alcaraz having just turned 22 and Sinner being 23, barring injury or an early retirement, would anyone be surprised if these two dominate the next decade and, between now and 2035, every major final will feature at least one of them?
From 2005-2025, only nine out of the possible 82 Slam finals did not feature at least one of the 'Big Three', six of them coming after 2022, and the one in 2020 was when Djokovic was ejected from the US Open after hitting a lines judge.
So, if Alcaraz and Sinner are to take over tennis as we expect, it's reasonable to predict that they'll be featuring in nearly every final, just like the well-known trio did, but is that good or bad for the sport?
Most sports fans claim that having the same person or team win time after time is boring, predictable and turns them off the sport, but when you look around world-wide, it's not just tennis that has been dominated by the same names.
The English Premier League is one of, if not the most popular, football league in the world, yet over the last two decades, only six different teams have won the league, and over the last eight years, only two.
The NFL certainly didn't lose popularity when Tom Brady was at the peak of his powers and was making regular appearances in the Super Bowl.
Using the same period in the NBA, since 2005, there have been 11 different teams that have won the title, where some fans are now saying the league has lost its charm, since 2025 will see the seventh different champion in seven straight years.
So clearly, having less parity in some of the more popular sports leagues in the world hasn't caused people to lose interest in them, so why should it in tennis?
For casual fans, no doubt, having a popular and well-known player constantly reaching finals and winning makes the sport easier to jump in and out of.
From a tennis perspective, this is what you want: more eyes on the sport will increase the popularity, and then the revenue will follow.
The same players constantly winning and making finals also allows the sport to be marketed like a movie.
If you watched the first matchup between two players, just like seeing a movie sequel, you're more likely to go and watch the next one, and if it's good enough to keep going, fans will be compelled to see the whole franchise play out.
So, with the 'Big Three' franchise finally concluding, now it feels like we have a head-to-head rivalry about to take over the sport.
Since they entered the scene, Sinner and Alcaraz have played each other three times at a Grand Slam event.
At Wimbledon in 2022, they met in the fourth-round where Sinner won in four sets. A few months later, Alcaraz would get his revenge at the US Open, winning in five sets to advance to the semis.
These two matchups sort of felt like prequels to what was the main event at Roland-Garros earlier this month, where Alcaraz pulled off one of the best comebacks we've witnessed in the sport, to take out the Italian No.1 in the final.
It feels like just the start of a genuine rivalry, where we may see these two battle it out for years to come, and if we get more five-set finals, watch the viewership numbers skyrocket.
So, on the flip side, could this be bad for tennis?
After around 20 years of being accustomed to the same three players rotating through winning each major and having every event be pretty predictable before a ball has even been hit, it can get boring.
Even more so, if you can basically pencil in who will be in the final for each major, why spend time watching the earlier rounds?
If you love the sport, of course, you'll watch every second you can, but for those casual viewers, they're way more likely to just follow the scores and jump on board once the semi-finals begin.
Seeing the same people win time after time can also get dull very quickly, and instead of appreciating the greatness, fans can start to resent it and find themselves rooting against some of the game's greats, purely because they're bored of them winning.
Having the same players dominate also makes it increasingly less likely that we see a crazy underdog story.
When Emma Raducanu won the 2021 US Open as a qualifier, you could argue that it was just as, or maybe even more compelling of a story than seeing the same two or three players dominate year after year.
On the men's side of things, the last time we had anything like that was in 2001 when Goran Ivanišević won Wimbledon.
It doesn't feel like we'll get anything like that on the men's circuit anytime soon, or potentially ever again.
However, while there are several negatives to having the men's Tour being constantly dominated by the same two to three players, it's hard to turn down the idea of having two potential all-time greats battling it out for the next decade in favour of parity.
If the French Open final is anything to go by, just like the last 20 years of tennis, whenever the 'Big Three' would face each other, the next 10 are going to be must-see matches when Sinner and Alcaraz are on opposite sides of the net.
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