In professional tennis, some shifts in power are sudden and seismic. Take, for example, Rafael Nadal’s early ascendence to the top of the game. In the beginning of 2005, the Spaniard was 18 years old and ranked #51 in the world. By the time Roland Garros approached later that year, he had won five titles and was in the top five. Playing in his first-ever French Open, Nadal would win the trophy and boldly announce the beginning of a legacy of clay-court dominance that would barely waver over the next dozen years. But most shifts in the game’s balance of power are slower and subtler, more easily viewed when looking back in time, saying “that was the moment when…,” and this week at the Canadian Open felt like one of those important moments.
At this year’s Rogers Cup in Toronto, there was a string of upsets of older, established players by younger upstarts, most notably by 19-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas. The Greek player defeated four of the ATP’s top ten (Thiem, Djokovic, Anderson and Zverev) in a row to reach the final, where he would ultimately come up short against Rafael Nadal. And while Tsitsipas garnered most of the headlines this week, there were a number of other notable upsets including 20-year-old Frances Tiafoe defeating veteran Milos Raonic (and coming very close to defeating world #5 Dimitrov) and 18-year-old Felix Auger-Aliassime beating 18th-ranked Lucas Pouille. The number and magnitude of these upsets is just too great to be a fluke, and I can’t help but feel like this tournament is one of those critical moments in tennis history when the younger generation of players finally gained the momentum they need to start making a meaningful impact on the landscape of men’s tennis.
While it’s a pretty safe bet that we won’t see any more teen phenoms like Nadal and Boris Becker crashing onto the scene and winning multiple Majors early in their careers, we are definitely starting to see many young talented players challenging and consistently defeating older, higher-ranked players and, in some cases, beating their “Big Three” childhood idols. Now it’s up to this next generation of players to keep the momentum going and to keep the very upper echelon of players on their toes.
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