Novak Djokovic says he is not contemplating retirement and will focus more than ever on Grand Slam tournaments in the future. Paul Newman says that remaining motivated is likely to be key to how long the 36-year-old extends his all-conquering career.

After Novak Djokovic won the Australian Open in 2008 he was determined not to look too far ahead. “It’s my first Grand Slam,” he said at the time. “I’m very happy about that. I’m going to take it easy. I’m going to try not to think about reaching even higher goals right away. I’m not in a rush.”

Nearly 16 years later the Serb is still happy with his lot and certainly in no mood to rush into retirement. “As long as I’m one of the main contenders for the Grand Slams and winning the biggest tournaments in sport, I will not leave it,” he says.

At the age of 36, Djokovic is playing as well as he ever has. This was the third year (after 2015 and 2021) in which he went within one match win of becoming the first man since 1969 to achieve a pure calendar-year Grand Slam of the sport’s four biggest titles. Indeed, he went closer than ever to matching Rod Laver’s feat, his only Grand Slam loss coming against Carlos Alcaraz in a desperately tight Wimbledon final.

Djokovic’s only subsequent defeat in 2023 was against Jannik Sinner in the group stage of the year-end ATP Finals, a loss which he immediately avenged in the final to become the first man to claim the title seven times. He also became the first man to top the world rankings for 400 weeks.

Having won his 24th Grand Slam singles title at this year’s US Open – he now matches Margaret Court’s all-time record total and has won two more than any other man – Djokovic is ready to make more history. If he wins Wimbledon again he will become the oldest All England Club champion in the open era and will match Roger Federer’s men’s record of eight Wimbledon singles titles. If he wins any of the four Grand Slam titles from next year’s US Open onwards he will replace Ken Rosewall as the oldest men’s Grand Slam singles champion in the open era.

What an ???????????? season for Novak Djokovic! ???

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— Eurosport (@eurosport) December 22, 2023

Until recently the talk in men’s tennis was of the supremacy of so many thirty-somethings and the longevity of modern-day players. Five years ago, for example, six of the world’s top seven players were in their thirties. However, the retirements of the likes of Federer and David Ferrer, combined with the physical decline of men like Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray, have meant that Djokovic has suddenly become the exception. After Wimbledon this summer, he was the only man in the world’s top 20 over the age of 27, while all of this year’s men’s Grand Slam quarter-finalists other than Djokovic were aged 27 or under.

On a purely physical level, Djokovic is a phenomenon. His powers of endurance and recovery, his speed of foot, the strength of his joints and his flexibility make him arguably the most extraordinary athlete in tennis history. Watching him prepare for a match or a training session is an education in itself as he contorts his body into seemingly impossible positions.

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He also has a remarkable capacity to play through injuries. Goran Ivanisevic, his coach, said that Djokovic went into this year’s Australian Open with a hamstring injury that would have forced “97 per cent of other players” out of the tournament. Yet not only did he play with the injury but he also won the title.

Federer enjoyed similar longevity to Djokovic, but the Swiss was an attacking player who liked to finish points quickly and avoid long rallies. Djokovic, in contrast, made his name as a counter-puncher who wears opponents down with his relentless ability to make them play an extra ball.

With physical reasons therefore unlikely to disrupt Djokovic’s continued pursuit of excellence, staying motivated could be more crucial to his ability to remain at the top. “Goals are important to motivate you so that you have clarity in your preparation, in what you do on a daily or a weekly basis in order for you to reach the destination where you’re headed,” he says. “I think that’s super-important for every athlete.”

After he completed a career Grand Slam by winning the French Open in 2016, Djokovic did not win a major title for the next two years. He admitted later that one of the reasons was his loss of motivation after he had finally achieved his goal of winning the only Grand Slam title missing from his collection. He also acknowledges that over the last three years he has been driven on by a desire to beat the records for the number of men’s Grand Slam titles won and the number of weeks on top of the world rankings.

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Now that those targets have been achieved, might his desire wane again? Djokovic does not think so. “My greatest motivation is still my love for the game,” he says. “I really like competing. It’s as simple as that. And then I always have goals – to win another Slam, to be world No 1 again, to finish the year as No 1. Those are the big goals. And of course next year is the Olympic Games.”

He added: “Occasionally I do ask myself: ‘Why do I still need this at this stage after all I have done? How long do I want to keep going?’ I do have these questions in my head, of course, but knowing that I still play at such a high level and win the biggest tournaments, I don’t want to leave this sport if I’m still at the top, if I’m still playing the way I’m playing now.”

Djokovic, for whom a first Olympic gold medal in singles is likely to be a major target next year, has won seven of the last 10 Grand Slam tournaments he has contested (and reached the final of two of the others). However, what if his level were to dip, to the point where he was no longer the world’s best player?

Given that 20 and 21-year-olds like Alcaraz, Holger Rune, Lorenzo Musetti and Ben Shelton – the first three of whom have all beaten Djokovic already  – have so much room for improvement, the challenges to the Serb’s supremacy look certain to grow. If the young guns get the better of him too many times, might his retirement come sooner than he or anyone else currently expects? If, for example, he has not won any more Grand Slam titles by this time next year, would he carry on playing?

Djokovic knows that one of the keys to staying at the top is never standing still and striving always to improve. “Even if you find a formula that works, it’s not a guarantee and it’s actually most likely that it’s not going to work the next year,” he said. “You need to reinvent yourself, because everyone else does. As a 36-year-old competing with 20-year-olds I probably have to do it more than I have ever done in order to keep my body in shape.”

Although Djokovic insists he has no figure in mind in terms of the number of Grand Slam titles he would eventually like to win, we can be sure that in 2024 he will play a schedule geared to peaking at those four tournaments and the Olympics. Beyond that, much is likely to depend on how he fares in the coming year.  “I don’t know how many more seasons I have in my legs,” he said. “So let’s see.”

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The popularity of tennis is directly influenced by other sports but the tennis authorities have yet to realise the wonderful opportunity that team tennis offers in helping us be strong in the face of stiff competition 

Last week’s Davis Cup ties and this weekend’s Laver Cup have and will offer up moments of passion, excitement and sheer unbridled emotion that regular individual tennis tournaments simply can’t recreate and it’s these experiences which can strengthen the sport of tennis in a time when the battle for the attention and participation of fans and players is being fought on numerous fronts.

Traditionally tennis has enjoyed a constant flow of new players encouraged into the game after watching a player on television or being encouraged to compete at their local club by their parents and friends, but for many years a growth in challenger sports and the vast choice on TV and online has increased the difficulty in grabbing enough attention to maintain and grow tennis’s fan base.

Many will be drawn towards team sports as the tribal nature of supporting your local club or playing with a group of friends on the weekend seems a more tempting prospect than an individual sport such as tennis. Navigating your way through your teen years is tricky enough so why not do what your friends are doing and follow a team that allows you to be part of the conversation over favourite players and local rivals.

This is where tennis has an opportunity to create a structure for team tennis to thrive and to help garner some of that support and tribalism that others sports rely on. Ok we admit that the Laver Cup is unlikely to enjoy the fanatical support that a Premier league football match or NFL Superbowl receives but with male and female professional players form nearly every country on the globe, tennis has the all the moving parts it needs.

Just imagine an annual mixed team competition where the very best male and female players gave it their all for their country, year after year, in a truly competitive environment. At the present time, tennis is the one of the only professional sports where mixed matches are a realistic format. Football is unlikely to have a mixed World Cup any time soon.

Assuming the ATP and WTA can craft a merger of sorts then they will be perfectly placed to come up with such a competition that fits into the calendar, is enticing to all the top players offering them a chance to represent their home country in a truly competitive format and creates a spectator and TV-friendly event that can be attended and watched by a global tennis audience.

It will require numerous stakeholders to want to make it happen and to put aside their own selfish ambitions but the resulting event will boost tennis overall therefore benefiting all these stakeholders from the Grand Slams and other professional bodies.

More importantly it could grab the attention of a generation of potential new tennis fans and players as they search for a sport to support for the rest of their lives.

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The US Open is designed for drama, and in Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz it may have its perfect performers.

In tennis, eras are defined by rivalries. It has always been that way. There was the John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg ‘fire and ice’ era, the Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi era, the Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer era, which then expanded into the ‘big three’ era. The women’s game has been no different, with era’s defined by rivalries between Chrissy Evert and Martina Navratilova, Monica Seles and Steffi Graf, and Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova.

At Wimbledon, the rivalry that will define the next era of men’s tennis began, as Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic finally collided in a showpiece final. What a final it was too, with some of the best tennis we have seen on an ATP court for years. It was as explosive as it was storied, and it evolved beautifully over four hours to create the kind of narrative that is beyond even the finest fiction writer. It was, simply put, magnificent.

However, the thing that perhaps made it truly special was that it left you feeling like that particular match-up was not over, but just beginning. Yes, there are 16 years between the players, and ordinarily you’d see that as a passing of the torch from a fading legend to an emerging colossus, but there is nothing ordinary about Novak Djokovic. He may be 36 years old, but he is not fading. In fact, he has looked as good this year as he ever has done.

And that makes the US Open all the more exciting. Not only will both Alcaraz and Djokovic feel like they have everything to prove to each other and themselves, but they both have wider motivations as well. For Alcaraz, he will be returning to the scene of his first major title and defending a Grand Slam crown for the first time. That’s a big moment for any player, although one could argue that in winning Wimbledon he has already demonstrated that he is far from a flash in the pan.

As brilliant as Alcaraz is, though, the 2023 US Open will probably be more about Djokovic – as it generally has been of late. In 2020, his remarkable fourth round defaulting against Pablo Carreno Busta after he accidentally struck a line judge with a ball dominated tennis headlines like little before or since. The following year he was reduced to tears on Court Arthur Ashe as the stress and pressure of chasing the calendar slam finally caught up with him in a straight sets final defeat to Daniil Medvedev. The following year saw the Serbian put himself at the centre of a political storm again, with him prevented from entering America due to his choice not to be vaccinated against Covid 19. All of these events have something in common, of course: Despite him dominating the headlines, he didn’t win the US Open.

Indeed, surprisingly given that Djokovic is fairly considered the greatest hardcourt player of all time, he has only won the US Open three times. We use the word only there in the context of his ten Australian Open titles, of course. Three titles at a Grand Slam is more than most players win in an entire career, never mind at one event.

Still, the point is that it is going to be fascinating to watch Djokovic in New York this summer. Is he still the dominant force on tour, or has Carlos Alcaraz surpassed him? Can he finally get another US Open title to his name after years of storied mishaps? Can he get some semblance of satisfaction after feeling wronged by his exclusion 12 months ago? Rarely has Djokovic had so much to prove, but when he has, he has never been found wanting.

It won’t be all about just Alcaraz and Djokovic, though. Since Rafael Nadal took himself off the tour indefinitely as he battles injury, the whole Tour has felt primed for change as its top players jostle for position. Daniil Medvedev has won the US Open before, and he will always be a threat in New York due to the conditions being very favourable to his game. He will be seeing himself as a major contender alongside Alcaraz and Djokovic and few would dare dispute it.

Beyond that top three, it would probably take someone to pull off a big surprise to emerge from New York with the title. However, it’s not the end of the key battles. Three former US Open champions appear to be involved in key personal battles right now. Dominic Thiem is still striving to discover if he can ever return to anything like his former level. After winning the Covid-hit 2020 title, he has admitted his motivation has taken a nosedive and he has been struggling to regain it since. Then there are former three-time major winners Stan Wawrinka and Andy Murray, who are battling age and the tolls of serious injury, always in the hope for just one more deep run at a major that vindicates all they have put their bodies through.

The women’s side of the draw is likely to be as unpredictable as ever. Last year, Iga Swiatek took the title and it was a significant one as it made her a multi-surface major winner. She was unable to become an all-surface champion by winning Wimbledon this summer, although you do feel it’s just a matter of time. Traditionally, though, the US Open has been a happy hunting ground for the underdog. Since 2017, Sloane Stephens, Naomi Osaka, Bianca Andreescu and Emma Raducanu have all won maiden majors in New York, and who is to say it won’t go that way again?

If it does, it’s hard not to root for the apparently luckless Ons Jabeur. At Wimbledon, she reached her third final in five Grand Slams, only to lose for a third time too, this time to Marketa Vondrousova. Jabeur will once again be one of the favourites, but with every defeat the pressure increases, and you do feel like the window of opportunity is starting to close on her.

Despite the WTA’s propensity for surprise winners, it still feels difficult to look beyond Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka. Both go into the tournament as reigning hardcourt major winners and they certainly have the groundstrokes to make the most of conditions in New York. Elena Rybakina is another intriguing name in the mix. She has become a fixture in the WTA top five and has definitely taken her game to new levels since winning Wimbledon in 2022.

How confident can you really be about forecasting how any WTA tournament will go, never mind the perpetually unpredictable US Open? What we can say for sure is that there will be shocks, surprises, and at least one or two Cinderella runs that take fresh faces to sudden new heights. It just wouldn’t be the US Open without them.

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Psychologists use a tool called the Infinity change cycle. One of its basic premises is that if you experience a major disruption in your life – whether it is positive or negative – there is no way of avoiding the chaos that follows, says David Sammel as he analyses what’s next for Emma Raducanu

“Chaos” has a negative connotation for most people, but it can actually be very positive, because it is the time where you learn the most. Once you start to emerge from the chaos you can start to look back and see the wood from the trees and gain some clarity. It is from this new place that you can start to make better decisions.

Let me apply some of that thinking to Emma Raducanu. Two summers ago the then 18-year-old Briton won three matches on her Grand Slam debut at Wimbledon before going on to claim an extraordinary triumph in New York. Ranked No 150 in the world, she was the first qualifier in history to win the US Open – and did so without dropping a set.

It was one of the most astonishing performances in tennis history. Boris Becker may have been one year younger than Emma when he won Wimbledon, but the 17-year-old German was already ranked No 20 in the world and had a tour title to his name after winning at Queen’s Club.

Just a few weeks before her breakthrough at Wimbledon Raducanu had been sitting her “A” level exams at school. She had been a good junior player, but her elevation to superstardom came at breakneck speed. That sort of meteoric rise would be incredibly difficult for anyone to handle and the adjustment required huge.

Because of the enormity of what Emma achieved, I believe she has yet to emerge fully from the chaos. And when you make decisions while you are still in chaos it is no surprise that they can be rather erratic.

I can only look on from the outside. I have no inside knowledge of Raducanu as a person. However, one thing I do know is tennis – and there are a couple of things that stand out to me. Firstly, I found it puzzling that Andrew Richardson, who had coached Emma to victory in New York, was discarded so quickly. I know Andy extremely well, because I coached him to much of his success as a player. He knows what it takes to play excellent tennis. I suspect that the job he did with Emma might have been seriously underestimated. Andy was wise enough and calm enough to be a stabilising force throughout Emma’s New York run.

Most players strive to win a Grand Slam title their whole careers and only a few ever manage to reach that goal. After Emma had achieved the feat at such a young age the rhetoric that followed surprised me. It was all about how inexperienced she was and how she had to employ a coach who had more experience on the WTA tour. The narrative downplayed what she had achieved and suggested that somehow she had a long way to go before she could achieve it again.

While I agree 100 per cent that Raducanu would still have had much to learn (and still does) and lacks some experience, the reality is that she is already a Grand Slam winner and already has the capacity and mindset to achieve such a phenomenal result.

The fact that she has gone through so many coaches in such a short period of time is a clear indicator that there is still chaos and that she has not fully emerged to know exactly what she wants to do. Nevertheless, some good pieces are falling into place with the hiring of Jez Green to help with her physical training and the constant presence of Will Herbert as her physio. The only piece that has not fallen into place so far is her coach.

A lot of coaching at a high level is about man management, helping the player stay relaxed, enjoy the game and feel like they are going forward at all times. Even when results are not as good as you would hope, the overall feeling should be one of progress.

It is very difficult to play good tennis with a lot going on in your mind. My concern would be that the lack of stability might mean that, while playing her matches, Raducanu would have a lot of different philosophies and coaching tips floating around

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Iga Swiatek has little left to prove, but the strength of her lasting legacy may depend upon winning the biggest title of the lot, Wimbledon, on the surface she finds hardest to master.

In tennis, few things seem to matter more than legacy. There are no teams or shared accomplishments, no safety net or blaming anyone else. Players do what they do and are remembered for it. And, as everyone knows, there is no true tennis legacy without winning Wimbledon.

We can argue as long as you want about whether that should be the case or whether it is fair, but its not going to change. Wimbledon is the pinnacle of prestige in tennis, whether players like it or not.

For Iga Swiatek, everything she is working towards now is about legacy, and she is writing a good one and done all the right things so far. First she proved she could win a major, and then she proved she could win multiple ones. By adding the US Open to her Roland Garros triumphs, she showed she could win majors on multiple surfaces too. The next step is to prove she is an all-surface major champion, and that is the hurdle that many a player has found insurmountable.

“I would say the grass is pretty tricky for me,” Swiatek admits. “I’m not going to lie. I mean, I guess you can see that I’m not playing maybe as efficiently as on other surfaces.

“Basically my confidence is getting better overall. But [Wimbledon] is tricky and I’m still feeling out how to play the best game here.

“On grass I feel like everything changes. You have to adjust the movement. I mean, for sure I really like how I move on court, especially when I can slide, when I can recover quickly. Here I can’t really slide. I have to slow down before hitting the ball, so it’s tricky.

“I think I would play well on grass if I would have kind of more time to just play on this surface. I mean, every year it’s only like four weeks, so I feel it’s not enough to learn properly.

“I guess I can see other players who learn how to do that, so I still have hope.”

The irony, of course, is that Swiatek already has her name engraved on a Wimbledon trophy. She won the girls juniors in 2018, beating Leonie Kung in the final.

That, though just highlights how ultimately little the title means in terms of predicting the future. Swiatek has seen a meteoric rise, but you will have to scroll down to the 500s to find Kung’s current ranking.

A list of Wimbledon girls champions will show names such as Swiatek, Caroline Wozniacki and Ashleigh Barty, but for the most part you’ll struggle to find players who went on to make their mark as a grass-courter of any real renown. Sofya Zhuk, Angelique Widjaja, Iroda Tulyaganova and Noppawan Lertcheewakarn to name but a few. It is then, far from a guarantee.

Make no mistake about it, though: Swiatek will go to SW19 as the favourite favourite. Well, as strong a favourite as you can get in the WTA, which remains one of the most unpredictable competitions in sport. She won’t, though, be the strong favourite.

The reason for that is the ever-improving Elena Rybakina. The Kazakhstani was a surprise winner last year, but it is probably to tennis’ shame that no one really saw her coming. She had been quietly building momentum and impressing for a while, but the last 12 months have seen her elevate her game to a level that few truly predicted.

That all started with a win at Wimbledon last year for which she never seemed to get the credit she deserved. Some of that felt political. After the All-England Club’s decision to ban Russian and Belarusian players from competing, even to the point whereby they were willing to sacrifice ranking points to stand by it, a Moscow-born champion was something no one wanted to make much noise about.

There was also a little bit of underdog fatigue in the WTA, in all honesty. Surprise winners of majors have become so commonplace that they have lost their sparkle a little. Rybakina was probably just seen as the latest one-Slam wonder who had a good run at a great time. While such a belief would be understandable, her record since has proven her substance. She heads into her Wimbledon title defence having won two WTA 1000s in Indian Wells and Rome, and she looks like she will be difficult to stop.

As ever, though, there will be no shortage of contenders who will fancy their chances. The real narrative this year, though, may be the players who are not there. It will be the just the second Wimbledon in 15 years without Serena Williams, and 2019 champion Simona Halep won’t be in the draw either as she responds to accusations of doping. Home interest has been hit incredibly hard too with the absence through injury of Emma Raducanu, and Ashleigh Barty’s unexpected retirement last year continues to leave a void at the very top of the women’s game.

That void may ultimately be filled by Aryna Sabalenka. The Belarusian has long since looked like possessing all the tools to dominate, but she has struggled to believe it. That missing ingredient may now have been found, though. She has always threatened to do well at Wimbledon, but this year she arrives in London for the first time as a major champion having won the Australian Open. If that belief still courses through her veins, expect her to improve upon her career-best semi-final performance from 2021.

Another real ace in the pack could be Petra Kvitova. The Czech has struggled for form a little since a knife attack in her own home left her with a badly damaged hand. She is a two-time Wimbledon champion, though, and she appears to be having a strong bounce back season in 2023. That has included an outstanding Sunshine Double that saw her reach the quarterfinals in Indian Wells before winning the Miami title. There are signs that her serve has found its rhythm again, and that should play well at Wimbledon and the other grass court events this summer, including Eastbourne where she is the defending champion.

It’s difficult to discount last year’s runner-up Ons Jabeur too, although serious doubts exist over her form this season. The Tunisian demonstrated the agony of small margins that comes with top-level tennis last year. She reached two Grand Slam finals, Wimbledon and the US Open, and felt like she was on the cusp of a hard-earned and well-deserved major breakthrough. However, she lost both and there appears to be something of a hangover from that this season. Jabeur failed to get past the second round at the Australian Open and she has uncharacteristic early exits from tournaments have plagued her so far this year.

Ultimately, though, it feels like a case of ‘probably Swiatek, but if not then who knows’ in the WTA right now, and the list of players who look like they could, and probably should, win a major only seems to be getting longer – and that can only be good for fans.

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To most people, Roger Federer is the undisputed King of Wimbledon and grasscourt tennis in general – but Novak Djokovic is most definitely not one of them… 

When it comes to men’s tennis in the last 20 years, many words have been used to attempt to describe it. Iconic is the positive take, and it is probably what the era deserves given the titanic tussles of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and, to a lesser extent, Andy Murray. A much more negative description would perhaps be ‘boring’. After all, until recently at least, we have generally gone into every Grand Slam knowing that much more often than not, one of three men will win it. Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle you might find the terms ‘predictable.’

The irony, of course, is that we used to consider Wimbledon predictable even before this great era. In the 19 editions between 1984 and 2002, a total of 10 men got their names inscribed on the Wimbledon trophy. That included an eight-year spell in which Pete Sampras won it seven times. In the 19 editions since, the only winners have been the ‘big four.’ This year it is difficult to envisage anyone stopping Novak Djokovic from extending that streak to 20.

While that may not be especially exciting for fans who are probably feeling long overdue a surprise in SW19, it will open up a very interesting debate within tennis. During this golden era, it has been an accepted truth that not only did men’s tennis have three kings, but the all had their separate and distinct kingdoms. Rafael Nadal was the king of clay, Novak Djokovic was the man to beat on hardcourts and Roger Federer owned the grass court season.

However, should Djokovic win another Wimbledon title this year, we may be forced to re-examine that previously accepted truth. It would be the Serbian’s eighth title, which would match Federer’s haul, and his five successive crown, which would also match his former rival’s best ever Wimbledon winning run. Statistics are, though, just an aide to debate, not the end of them.

There will be no Roger Federer at Wimbledon this year, of course. Rafael Nadal is out as well. Barring injury, Andy Murray will be there too, although the hip injury that decimated his career six years ago have forced him to leave his major winning days behind him. Of the four great grass players in the world, then, Djokovic is the last man standing. Well, standing on two fully functioning hips. There are those, then, who may say that he will, and must, win by default. That would do both him and Wimbledon itself a disservice, though. No one wins a major by default, and let’s also not forget that three of Djokovic’s Wimbledon titles came after beating Federer in the final. For the record, that is all three of the Wimbledon finals they have contested. Another hint, perhaps, that Djokovic has already proven himself Federer’s grass court equal?

Whilst Djokovic appears to have every chance of matching Federer’s finest Wimbledon achievements this year, he may well be fighting a losing battle if he is ever hoping to usurp the Swiss as Centre Court’s favourite son. If the perpetual GOAT debate that has raged in tennis for a few years now has taught us anything, it is that what you do isn’t enough – how you do it will always count for something.

Wimbledon, probably more than any other major, has always chosen their own legends, and winning is not necessarily part of the formula. For evidence of that, you only have to look in Djokovic’s own camp where you will find Goran Ivanisevic, a player who was loved at Wimbledon as a loser long before he eventually won it in 2001, a full decade after his first of three final defeats. The truth is, while Djokovic commands the total respect of the general public at Wimbledon, outside of his own fanbase he is not loved by them, certainly nowhere near the extent to which Federer is.

However, despite his historic rivals being out of the picture, we mustn’t fall into the trap of believing Djokovic just has to turn up to win the tournament. Looking around the ATP rankings will not reveal an abundance of proven grasscourt quality admittedly, but it will provide an awful lot of intrigue.

Matteo Berrettini and Nick Kyrgios have been the defeated finalists in the last two years and both have a game that looks tailor-made for grasscourt tennis. Berrettini especially has proven it by winning two Queen’s and two Stuttgart titles. In fact, more than half of the Italian’s career titles have come on grass, which is remarkable when you consider how small a window the surface occupies in the tennis calendar.

With Djokovic’s old rivalries being lost to the midst of time, the final great challenge in his incredible career may be trying to hold off the inevitable advance of Carlos Alcaraz for as long as possible. In terms of Wimbledon, though, Alcaraz is something of an unknown quantity.

“It’s different, of course,” Alcaraz told Tennishead last year when asked about how adaptive his huge game is to Wimbledon. “Grass is tough for me because the movement is tough, more difficult than other surfaces. I would say to play four hours on grass is tougher than the other surfaces, even if there are not long rallies. I’m going to compare long rally here is like three or four long rallies on another surface. So, for me it’s tougher to play a marathon match on grass.”

At the time of writing, Alcaraz has played just six matches on grass, including a run to the last 16 last year. While he may profess his struggles on the surface, though, his record – and much more so his game – suggests he has little to fear. The only players to have defeated him on grass so far are Jannik Sinner and Daniil Medvedev, both when he was a teenager.

You would have to consider Medvedev himself a serious contender at Wimbledon too, of course. He had a poor French Open, but he seldom excels on clay. That said, his Wimbledon record isn’t exactly stellar either. He has only been past the third round once, but like other Russian players he will arrive in SW19 with a point to prove after being banned from competing last year. While some players may struggle with that pressure, it is more likely to light a fire beneath the enigmatic Medvedev.

There are plenty of other dark horses too, not least Holger Rune, who heads into the grass season yet to play a single match on the surface on the ATP Tour in his young career so far. Wimbledon will also test the work Jannik Sinner has done with coach Darren Cahill, who previously guided Simona Halep to a title in SW19, to improve his net game, and that could prove the missing piece that the clean-hitting Italian has been missing. Meanwhile, can Alexander Zverev and Stefanos Tsitsipas shrug off confusingly poor grasscourt records to finally make a Grand Slam breakthrough on a surface which, theoretically at least, should give them an edge?

Whatever happens, the Wimbledon men’s singles this year promises much. Either Novak Djokovic takes another title and forces us to reassess our grass GOAT presumptions, or a new star will rise to finally break the stranglehold of the Big Four on tennis’ most prestigious tournament.

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No sporting spectacle in the world clings to its traditions like Wimbledon does, but does that make it special or hold it back?

Every sport has a pinnacle. That is just the way it is. Football is played all year, in just about every country on the planet, yet the World Cup every four years is its apex. American Football has its Super Bowl, Formula One has the Monaco Grand Prix, and tennis has Wimbledon.

For many, Wimbledon is the only tennis they will watch all year, but they will not miss a minute of it. It is one of the few tournaments that transcend sport – a veritable blue chip event that is part of the very culture of our lives.

It can be easy to look at such a monolith of our lives and think it must be easy to get right. The truth is, the sheer pressure of responsibility on its custodians, the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, can be crushing. Never before was that in evidence than last year when they took the controversial decision to ban Russian and Belarussian players from competing due to the conflict in Ukraine.

You can’t help but wonder whether there is regret within Wimbledon that they yielded to government pressure and stood by that decision. Frankly, you’d be surprised if there wasn’t. As well-intended as it was, it ultimately changed nothing and cost the tournament plenty. That is the anatomy of a bad decision, however you want to frame it.

Hindsight has probably not been kind to the decision, especially given that at the end of the women’s final, it was a Moscow-born players who lifted the winner’s trophy aloft anyway, albeit one who plays under a Kazakhstan flag. The Russian tennis federation attempted to claim the victory as their own, and no one took them seriously. That essentially demonstrated how little Wimbledon had to fear.

In many ways, though, the whole thing was a worthwhile exercise for a very simple reason: It told Wimbledon exactly where it stands in the modern tennis world. They were not strong enough to assert influence on the sport on a whole, and that became abundantly clear when no other tournaments followed their lead. Nor were they too big to be sanctioned by the ATP and WTA. However, Wimbledon is does not need ranking points or to be part of a wider collective to attract the best players either and it remains the most prestigious tournament the sport has to offer. That was proven – beyond any doubt whatsoever.

However, it all poses the question of where Wimbledon goes from here. Because, let’s face it, the modern world is a place Wimbledon rarely cares to venture. That is what has always made it special. It is also, many believe, what is just starting to hold it back a little.

Later this summer, this will all become the concern of Debbie Jevans, who will succeed Ian Hewitt as Wimbledon chair, and it is she who will be tasked with the difficult job of modernizing The Championships to bring it back into kilter with the rest of the sport while defending everything it has always been with sufficient ferocity to appease the traditionalists.

Those traditionalists are already looking on cautiously at how recent changes will pan out long term. In the last five years, final set tiebreak rules have changed twice, for example, both times shifting it further from their roots. No tiebreaks in the final set became a tiebreaks at 12-12. Then to bring it in line with the other three Grand Slams, tiebreaks at 12-12 became first-to-ten super tiebreaks at 6-6 in the final set. The players love it, for many of Wimbledon’s most stringent traditionalists, the jury is still out. There have been scheduling changes too, with the middle Sunday being abolished a few years ago.

This year will see further changes elsewhere, with men’s doubles playing best of three sets instead of the traditional best-of-five. In truth, doubles tennis probably doesn’t stimulate sufficient passion among fans for that to cause much uproar, even if some may dislike the idea of it. The all-white dress code has been relaxed slightly this year too, but only for women. Few could possibly take issue with the reasons behind it, with the decision taken to allow coloured undershorts to be worn so female competitors do not have to worry about potentially showing during menstruation periods. What will cause concern, though, is whether it will provide a precursor for further relaxations in the coming years.

There are, after all, influential people within tennis who have already come out and called for Wimbledon to abolish the all-white dress code.

“Nothing is worse in sports than when you turn on the television and two players are wearing the same uniform or same outfits,” Billie Jean King said of the Wimbledon whites. “It’s horrible. No one knows who’s who. This is one of my pet peeves, I’ve been yelling for years. Have you ever seen any sport where the people wear the same outfit on each side?”

The truth is, though, that if Wimbledon wants to walk that tightrope between modernization and tradition, further changes to the dress code would probably remain firmly of the table. The key to success there will be to preserve the perception whilst modernizing experience. It is, let’s face it, the perception that is Wimbledon. That’s it’s spirit and it’s soul. It is the only thing that hasn’t changed. It’s still the white outfits against the lush green grass, it’s still the sponsor-free surroundings to the court, it’s still strawberries and Pimm’s. it’s the sheer pristineness of it all. When you think of Wimbledon, that is what comes to mind, that is the very essence of it.

Everything else has already changed, and for the better. There used to be rain delays that were so long that Cliff Richard starting singing, now the showcourts have retractable roofs. There used to be controversial line-calls, then they installed Hawkeye and allowed challenges. There is currently resistance to the plan to make all line-calls electronic and do away with line-judges altogether, but that change will come in soon enough as well and no one will complain.

The same cannot be said of the All England Club’s plans to expand into Wimbledon Park Golf Course. Ambitious plans to install 38 new courts, including an 8,000-seat arena, and a 23-acre public park. Opposition from locals has been ferocious, and it remains to be seen whether a compromise solution can be found that will inspire the Merton Council planning committed to allow the project to go ahead. That process has suffered multiple delays, but there should be a decision by the end of the year.

The thorn in the side of those plans is, ironically, preservationist attitudes. The area they are trying to develop was designed by Capability Brown in the 18th Century and formed part of the land owned by the Spencer family, ancestors of Princess Diana. To many, that history must be respected before any possible changes can be entertained.

The Wimbledon Park Project “will maintain the Championships at the pinnacle of the sport, delivering world-class facilities,” according to the AELTC, but it’s difficult to see how the plans remain intact in the face of what amounts to strong opposition that is backed by the local Member of Parliament.

Chris Baker, director of the Capability Brown Society, has accused the All England Club of an “act of vandalism,” and in that sense, the Wimbledon Park Project provides the perfect metaphor for the future that faces Wimbledon. The need to modernise is pressing, but only by appeasing the traditionalists can it possibly happen.

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Behind every iconic sporting rivalry, there always feels like there is a higher power that locks their fates together in a way even the greatest scriptwriters could never achieve. The Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal rivalry always had that feel to it. It was as if they were always bound to each other, tethered, whether they liked it or not.

Of course, Federer’s career is now over, and few in tennis would claim not to miss him. Fittingly, Rafael Nadal, his greatest rival was by the Swiss maestro’s side as the curtain officially came down on his career. After nearly two decades of them relentlessly battling each other, the sight of them sharing tears together at the realisation there would be no more were striking and a fabulous end to one of sport’s greatest tales.

As with any great story, though, the true artistry is in what we didn’t know as much as what is front and centre. Right from the first point, we knew it would be the last we saw of Roger Federer. No one thought it may just be the last we saw of Rafael Nadal too, though.

Granted, Nadal played some games at the end of the season and, due to an injury to Carlos Alcaraz, was the top seed at the Australian Open this year too. It was not Nadal that we saw in those tournaments, though, not really. A shadow of Nadal perhaps, maybe a shell of him, but it wasn’t the real him – the one we have all come to know, love and admire so much.

As we head into Wimbledon, the worry is that we will never actually see the real Nadal again. We haven’t seen him on court since that meek second-round defeat to Mackenzie McDonald in Melbourne, and all the indications are that we won’t be seeing him again until Australia next year too – and it’s worryingly reminiscent of the final couple of years that Federer endured. Perhaps that is fitting, but it is ultimately torturous to watch as well.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal at Laver Cup

After all, Federer and Nadal have always seemed to be on the same tracks. Federer was a couple of years ahead, but the stations were all the same. Breakthrough, majors, refinement, dominance, greatness icon status. It is a journey few get to undertake. However, with Federer’s journey now complete, we know which stations he passed through at the end: decline, injury, acceptance, retirement – and once again it is starting to appear that Nadal’s train is right behind that of his biggest rival.

For Federer, the injury was a long-standing knee problem. He had managed it for some time, but it flared up at the 2020 Australian Open to such an extent that it was deemed no longer manageable. The solution, it was hoped, would be simple arthroscopic surgery. Non-invasive, minor, back in a few months pain free and ready to rise again. That was the plan, anyway, but two further operations later and a failed comeback attempt later, and the writing was on the wall.

For Nadal it is not his knee but his left psoas muscle. The problem has plagued him since Wimbledon last year and there have been several failed attempts to simply manage it, as evidenced by his poor showing at the end of last season and the start of this. It was no surprise when the Spaniard opted to skip the Sunshine Double to focus on another attempt to conquer the problem. However, when he started to withdraw from tournaments on his beloved clay swing, red flags began to emerge and when he announced he was pulling out of Roland Garros it was clear that a major story was developing.

“I don’t deserve to end my career like this, in a press conference,” Nadal said when confirming that he would not be defending his French Open crown. Few could argue, not even his biggest detractors, who are generally fans of Novak Djokovic. “You can´t keep demanding more and more from your body, because there comes a moment when your body raises a white flag. Even though your head wants to keep going, your body says this is as far it goes. You never know how things will turn out, but my intention is that next year will be my last year.”

The next update came a couple of weeks later, on his 37^th birthday. While the tennis world watched the action at the French Open, pictures emerged of Nadal, the tournament’s greatest ever champion, laying in a hospital bed ahead of arthroscopic surgery. His spokesman was bullish about his prospects of a full recovery, albeit after a projected five months of recovery that will put him on the shelf for the rest of 2023. Nadal himself sounded a little more dejected: “Thank you for all the support you have shown me and that you show me every day,” he wrote on social media. “Today is also my birthday. Not in the desired or dreamed place, but still, thank you.”

There is no reason, of course, to assume that the end of Nadal’s career will follow the same script of that of Federer’s. He may make a full recovery from surgery, complete a strong rehab, come back better than ever and stick around at the very top even beyond 2024. If you ever feel even tempted to ever write off Rafael Nadal, I would respectfully suggest that you have not been paying enough attention.

The parallels between what Nadal is going through now, though, and the noises coming out of his camp and the way Federer ultimately faded away are very difficult to ignore. It’s also difficult to not feel a sadness about that. Just as we all realise at some point that our parents are not infallible, we also learn that our sporting greats are not immortal, even if the moments they have given us are.

However, there is also a kind of comfort to be found in the parallels with Federer too; a certain satisfaction that these two colossi of tennis were perhaps always destined to be locked together for our enjoyment after all.

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As Novak Djokovic dismissed Casper Ruud in the Roland Garros final with customary ruthless aplomb, we all knew that the most inevitable moment in men’s tennis had finally arrived.

For the very first time, Djokovic stands alone as the man with the most Grand Slam singles titles in history. Roger Federer was already in his wake, but Rafael Nadal is now too. The Grand Slam race, a topic that has dominated men’s tennis for a decade appears to be over as a result.

It has never really mattered which one of the three icons you were rooting for, everyone realised some time ago that Djokovic was winning it. He had the most left in his legs and, frankly, the most complete game the sport has ever seen.

The other big debate, the GOAT race, will rumble on of course. There is far too much subjectivity contained within that to ever truly dissipate. People will always have their favourites, and their criteria for ‘greatness’ will always reflect what they personally value. That is absolutely fine too. You don’t need the agreement of others to validate your belief.

What we can say now, though, is that Djokovic’s record gives him the strongest objective argument in the GOAT debate. Majors have always been how we have measured success in tennis. We can’t just pretend that isn’t the case, or change it because it no longer reflects brightest on your favourite.

And Djokovic’s record is objectively spectacular. Almost every meaningful record is his, and he certainly doesn’t appear to be done yet either. The Serbian got the better of him at the French Open, but Carlos Alcaraz is coming. We all know it, we all see it, and Djokovic is still the man to beat.

That will remain the case at Wimbledon too, where Djokovic can equal Roger Federer’s best achievements at the All-England club this summer. It was hard enough to envisage anyone stopping him before his Paris masterclass. Now, it feels practically impossible.

Ultimately, the reason why there remains any GOAT debate at all is probably because, ironically, Djokovic is almost too perfect a tennis specimen.

If you were going to build a tennis player from scratch from a technical point of view, it would be Djokovic. He is the ideal height and build to find the perfect balance between big serve and elite movement. His groundstrokes have both accuracy and power, and with a greater consistency than the sport has ever seen.

On the rare days that Novak Djokovic is struggling to find his level, he has the mentality to refuse to be beaten as well. In fact, he has a full box of mental tools at his disposal, such as a natural ability to rally in adversity, top-class court smarts and the harder he is pushed the more he raises his level. There is all the off-court stuff as well, such as how disciplined he is on health and keeping himself fit and firing.

It is literally perfect, all of it.

And that may be the problem for many. Sports is all about people and it is usually the human flaws, and the struggle to overcome them. Djokovic has, of course, has plenty of his own struggles to overcome, not least being brought up in war-torn Belgrade and a glutton intolerance that threatened to derail his career in its formative years, and he had Nadal and Federer to fight his way past too.

However, because he is so perfect on the court, those things are easily forgotten, and so it all perhaps looks a little easy for him, it doesn’t feel as storied. He didn’t have the emergence as a kid and that pressure like Nadal, or the huge injury problems to overcome. Nor did he have the flaws in his game and early temperament problems that Federer did.

That is just one perception, though. The reality is that Djokovic is the best player the men’s game has ever seen, and possibly will ever see. If there ever was a debate on that front, it should now be put to bed.

And, while you don’t have to love Novak Djokovic, he has more than earned his claims on tennis history – as well as the appreciation of us all.

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Men’s tennis has been a strange place to be in recent times. The more we watched Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic dominate, the more we have craved change – and the more we have feared it.

That change has already started, of course. Federer has gone and it has been almost a year since we had Nadal on Tour too. He played the backend of last season and the start of this one too, I know, but it was really more a shadow of him rather than anything else. We haven’t had the real Rafa since Wimbledon last summer.

And, it seems, we may never get him again. For the first time since 2004, Nadal will not be at the French Open after he withdrew due to injury.

“Too many days I have been stopping with too much pain. I don’t know when I will come back to the practice court. Maybe two months, three, four,” explained Nadal.

“I am following my personal feelings for my body and personal happiness. My goal is to try to enjoy next year. Which will probably be my last.”

In truth, limping to the finish line of a great career always feels somewhat inevitable. Stars fade but still shine brightly enough to give the encouragement to carry on. It’s also hard to let go. I think we can all relate to that in some way or another.

And, if we are honest with ourselves, it ending like this for Nadal felt more inevitable than anyone else. Maintaining his body to withstand the assault he subjects it to every moment on the tennis court has always been a herculean effort for the Spaniard.

We have all watched him play for years, and usually the overriding feeling with him has been awe. There has also been that little underlying fear though – fear that he could break down at any moment, fear that he might break under the strain of his own otherworldly intensity.

That, though, has always been a key element of Rafael Nadal’s appeal and popularity. You don’t just watch Nadal play tennis, you experience it. He has that incredible ability to make you feel along with him and take you on his journey. It’s rare, and it’s brilliant, and it will be missed.

In the meantime, the overriding emotion from tennis fans will be sadness. Sadness that, after years of flirting with the idea of career immortality, the end for Nadal is firmly in sight. Sadness that we won’t see him for months now, perhaps even the rest of the year.

Rafael Nadal's winning speech at last year's French Open is ??????? ? ??? ?????? right now ? pic.twitter.com/NOWXlOA0Y1

— Eurosport (@eurosport) May 18, 2023

Sadness too, that it has come to this – a legend who has given us so much joy for so long reduced to suffering with too much pain to do what he loves to do. He deserved better than that.

There is hope though, too. Hope that he will be able to go out on his own terms. That, clearly, is his plan. Rest up and recover this year with no pressure or expectation on himself, then say a sustained farewell to the Tour in 2024. That is the way to do it, and we will all be keeping our fingers crossed that he is able to do it.

Of course, it was Roger Federer’s plan too, and Nadal’s most iconic rival now serves as a reminder to him and everyone else that you can take nothing for granted.

For all intents and purposes, Federer’s career ended on a bagel as part of a straight sets defeat at Wimbledon. He had his goodbye moment at the Laver Cup a year later, but that’s all it was. Federer, like the rest of us, will be hoping for a much more satisfying conclusion to the Rafael Nadal story.

Rafael Nadal big events missed in 2023

Nadal has been out for four months to the day, and has therefore been unable to compete at five ATP Masters 1000 events and another of his other favourite tournaments across the clay court swing.

Here are the events he has had to withdraw from so far:

• Indian Wells (Three-time champion)
• Miami Open (Five-time finalist)
• Monte Carlo Masters (Record 11-time champion)
• Barcelona Open (Record 12-time champion)
• Madrid Open (Record five-time champion)
• Italian Open (Record 10-time champion)
• Roland Garros (Record 14-time champion)

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