The Big Three era may finally be drawing to a close, and a new era is getting underway. Should fans be excited, or worried, about what’s to come?

INTERVIEW: Carlos Alcaraz after his Miami Open conquest

The year was 2017, the city was Rome, and a faint note of impatience had crept into Novak Djokovic’s voice. This was his second press conference of the week at the Foro Italico, but already he had fielded a dozen questions about a new tournament the ATP was staging later that year in Milan.

“All I hear these few days is Next Gen, Next Gen,” Djokovic said.

After a decade of domination by Djokovic’s generation, the ATP was worried that he, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray had hogged the stage for too long. The tour wanted to remind fans that men’s tennis really did have a future beyond the Big Four. So it branded the younger players with a pithy nickname—Next Gen—ripped straight from a Pepsi campaign. It also created a tournament just for them, the Next Gen ATP Finals, that featured a host of forward-looking rule changes, including four-game sets, electronic line-calls and no-ad scoring.

The message was clear: Tennis needed fresh faces and a faster pace to appeal to today’s media-bombarded youth. But it wasn’t a message that was bound to appeal to a 30-year-old like Djokovic. If these newbies were “Next,” what did that make him? “Past?”

Four years later, on the same courts in Rome, Djokovic got his lighthearted revenge. That week, the 33-year-old beat four players who were at least 10 years his junior, before falling to the 34-year-old Nadal in the final. Afterward, Djokovic flashed a smile at Nadal and said, “Clearly, Roger, Rafa and I have reinvented the Next Gen. WE ARE THE NEXT GEN.”

It was hard to disagree. In spite of the ATP’s branding efforts, the old guard had refused to cede the stage. By the middle of 2021, the Big Four had won 62 of the 71 Grand Slam events that had been held since 2004. The Next Gen had produced one: Dominic Thiem’s 2020 US Open title. By February 2022, Federer, Djokovic, Nadal and Murray had combined to hold the No. 1 ranking for 921 consecutive weeks—or just under 18 years. In the past, four or five generations of players might have come and gone in that time.

“The Big Three has comically overextended its stay,” says Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay, who has chronicled the rise and fall of champions in many U.S. sports. “It’s exceptional how long this has gone on, and how many classic matches they’ve played. It makes it harder to imagine what could come next.”

Yet as the tour returns to Rome in May, we’re finally getting an idea of who will fill those immortals’ shoes. Last fall, Daniil Medvedev ended Djokovic’s quest for a Grand Slam at the US Open, and in February he ended the Big Four’s 18-year stranglehold on No. 1.

Behind Medvedev is a multinational army of Next Genners pressing toward the top, including Alexander Zverev of Germany, Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, Matteo Berrettini and Jannik Sinner of Italy, Andrey Rublev of Russia, Casper Ruud of Norway, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov of Canada, Hubert Hurkacz of Poland, Cameron Norrie of Great Britain, Taylor Fritz of the U.S., and Carlos Alcaraz of Spain. As of March 21, only three of the tour’s Top 16 were older than 26.

Even Nadal can read the writing on the wall.

“Novak is 35 this year, I’m 36, Roger is 40,” Nadal says. “That’s the circle of life, and it’s normal that the young generation is coming, and is going to go higher in the ranking than us.”

Now that the Next Gen is on the verge of becoming the Now Gen, the question is: Should tennis fans be excited?

We’ve been so used to the dominance of the Big Three,” says Tennis Channel commentator Mark Petchey, “That a lot of us wondered, ‘How are we going to create the headlines they create once they’re gone?’ It looked like we might be in for a barren spell.”

For years, the Big Three crushed the dreams of those who came after them. Juan Martin del Potro, Marin Cilic, Kei Nishikori, Grigor Dimitrov: each had big wins, and each earned loyal fans, but they were quickly dismissed as a lost generation.

Maybe it helps to have a pithy nickname, because the Next Gen has shown more persistence. They’ve taken their lumps at the hands of the old guard, but they’ve also forced Djokovic and Nadal to share the stage with them in big finals.

“The longevity of the Big Three has allowed Medvedev and others to develop rivalries with them,” Petchey says. “That gives the young guys more authenticity in people’s eyes. I think the future is brighter now than I might have a few years ago.”

This transition may look a lot like the one that men’s golf went through during the 2010s, as it shifted from an era dominated by Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to one where a wider cast of less-famous players vie for supremacy.

“Tiger is still the guy people name when they talk about golf,” says Golfweek senior writer David Dusek. “It was unrealistic to think that the sport could replace him, just like it was impossible for the NBA to replace Michael Jordan.”

Daniil Medvedev has been No. 1 and a Grand Slam champ, but will the millions who were drawn to the beauty of Roger Federer’s game feel the same way about Medvedev’s more rough-hewn talents?

But like tennis, golf saw a surge in participation and fan interest during the pandemic, and those new fans are less likely to feel like there’s a Tiger-sized void in the pro game.

“You have Rory [McIlroy], Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Brooks Koepka, [Collin] Morikawa, Rickie Fowler,” Dusek says. “Most of these guys are easy to root for. We see them every weekend on TV, so some momentum has built up around them.

“With Tiger, you had the one superstar; now there’s a group of guys who can win any week, and I think golf is good with that.”

Fans of men’s tennis may be in for a similar adjustment. If nothing else, the Next Gen offers a variety of personalities, from the wry humor and funky brilliance of Medvedev, to the earnest striving of Tsitsipas and Auger-Aliassime, to the theatrical intensity of Rublev, to the soulful amiability of Berrettini, to the boyish volatility of Shapovalov, to the willful exuberance of Alcaraz, to the California cool of Fritz. The way their stories play out and intertwine will be the story of the ATP for the next decade.

Then there’s Zverev. Once an heir apparent, the 24-year-old is not easy for a lot of fans to root for at the moment. The tour is investigating abuse allegations made by his former girlfriend, Olya Sharypova, and this year he was expelled from the Mexico Open after repeatedly slamming his racquet against an umpire’s chair. It’s hard to say how fans will feel about him in the future, but for now Zverev makes a less-than-ideal successor.

Is Medvedev that ideal successor? The Russian has been No. 1 and a Grand Slam champ, but will the millions who were drawn to the beauty of Federer’s game feel the same way about Medvedev’s more rough-hewn talents?

“He’s a thrilling player,” Gay says of Medvedev. “The average person may take a while to understand him, but he has his own charisma. His strokes are unorthodox, but that doesn’t make them less impressive.”

Still, Gay adds, “In tennis you need rivalries. That’s what elevates it.”

Who might make a popular foil for Medvedev? One name that comes up often is Auger-Aliassime. The well-spoken and unassuming Canadian with an exciting style of play checks all of the traditional tennis-fan boxes. He would also offer a contrast, game-wise and character-wise, with Medvedev.

“The early expectations may have been too high, but at 21 he’s made 10 finals,” Petchey says of Auger-Aliassime, who after nine runner-up finishes won his first tour title in 2022.

“He has the style to attract fans who haven’t come to tennis before.”

If you think you’ll miss Nadal’s Spanish-style ebullience, the 18-year-old Alcaraz is shaping up to be an uncannily perfect replacement. Just ask Rafa.

“I think he’s unstoppable in terms of his career,” Nadal says of Alcaraz. “He has all the ingredients. He has the passion. He’s humble enough to work hard. He [reminds] me a lot of when I was [17 or 18]….It’s great, honestly, to have such a star from my country.”

How about this country? With Fritz’s breakthrough win over Nadal in the Indian Wells final, the U.S. finally appears to have a horse in the Next Gen race.

For Dusek, who understands the appeal of homegrown stars to U.S. golf fans, the ascension of Fritz, who is starring in an upcoming Netflix reality series, would be a game-changer in terms of tennis’ popularity.

“If Taylor Fritz wins something like the US Open, then we’re not wondering about the future of the men’s game anymore,” Dusek says.

Will there come a time when Medvedev, Tsitsipas, Alcaraz or Fritz push each other to the heights that the Big Three reached? Will millions of fans ever care about them the way we cared about Roger and Rafa?

Susan Kim is a longtime Federer fan who hasn’t made up her mind about the Next Gen. She likes Medvedev’s humor and says he’s good for tennis because it “needs personalities right now.” She likes Auger-Aliassime’s “liquid style,” thinks Shapovalov is fun, is impressed by Jannik Sinner’s drive, and wants to see more of Sebastian Korda.

The New Yorker started following tennis in the 1970s. She rooted for Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg in the ’80s and lost some interest in the ’90s, before being brought back in a big way by Federer.

In 2009, Kim and her husband went to Roland Garros, planning to leave after the first week. On their last day in Paris, they received a stunning text message: Nadal had lost to Robin Soderling. The couple knew what they had to do: they changed flights, booked another week in France, bought tickets for the semifinals and final—and prayed that Federer would be there.

The next day, when he teetered on the brink of defeat to Tommy Haas, Kim says she had a “tantrum” on her hotel room floor. “You can’t do this to me!” she screamed at the TV.

Federer, of course, didn’t. He came back to beat Haas in five sets, and six days later Kim watched him win the French Open.

“That was a special time,” Kim says. “You had all these great players at once. Fed became more interesting because of his rivals, because he had to fail and get better.”

Will there come a time when Medvedev, Tsitsipas, Alcaraz or Fritz push each other to the heights that the Big Three reached? Will millions of fans ever care about them the way we cared about Roger and Rafa?

You never know. Even the greatest athletes need time to build their followings. But it seems unlikely that the younger set will threaten their records, or inspire the same fanatical loyalty from us. Instead of watching living legends, we’ll go back to watching fellow humans.

And that’s OK. Hearing “Next Gen, Next Gen” over and over may have bothered Djokovic once, but he knows that “next” doesn’t mean “better.” It means next. It means new. It means different. It means mystery.

It means, after two decades of certainty at the top of men’s tennis, we’ll be open to possibility again.