For the past 15 or so years, men’s tennis has been dominated by the Big Three: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Their contests were an immaculately curated contrast of styles, personalities, even sartorial choices. Their rivalries drove the sport to unexplored levels of quality and popularity, and their clashes became the narrative that drove every grand slam towards an inevitable finale.
There’s been a buzz about the Big Three at Wimbledon again this week, but not the original trio: Federer watches from the royal box these days, and Nadal, out with injury, may never again bring his wonderful collection of tics to the hallowed turf.
The chatter concerns the new Big Three in the women’s game: Poland’s Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka from Belarus and Elena Rybakina, who competes for Kazakhstan.
They are ranked one, two and three, respectively, and between them, they have won the last five majors. There’s a growing suspicion that one of them will lift the Venus Rosewater Dish as women’s champion next Saturday, though Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur and the Czech player Petra Kvitova, the two-time Wimbledon winner, might have thoughts on that.
It was tennis legend Chris Evert, who knows a thing or two about rivalries, who started the discussion earlier this year.
“There are three players now that could be the Federer, Nadal and Djokovic of women’s tennis, and we know who they are: Iga, Aryna and Elena,” she said. “We thought when Serena retired, ‘Oh, my gosh, women’s tennis is in trouble. Where’s the next champion going to come from?’ I think we’re looking at where the next champion is going to come from – if not three great champions.”
The omens, judging from Wimbledon, are promising for an engrossing, unpredictable dynamic. The first thing you notice is that the three players are very different physical types. Swiatek is the slightest, but is an electric mover. She wears a cap pulled almost over her eyes, so it’s hard to tell what she’s thinking.
Sabalenka has an Amazonian build and a tattoo of a snarling tiger on her left forearm, that she picked to reflect her aggressive style of play.
Rybakina, a surprise winner of last year’s Wimbledon, is tall and lithe, and her facial expression scarcely changes if she’s just hit a double fault or won the whole tournament.
“Iga’s a little shy,” says Barbara Schett, a former world no 7, and now a presenter of Eurosport’s Wimbledon coverage. “That’s certainly a contrast with the way she is on the court, because on the court she is brutal. She plays with such intensity, but off the court she almost seems a bit vulnerable to me.”
Sabalenka, meanwhile, can be unpredictable – last year she had to resort to serving underarm when her serve unravelled – but she can blast anyone off the court, too. “I’ve watched her for many, many years,” says Schett. “And I remember the first time I saw her, I was like, ‘Wow, how much power does she have?’ But she didn’t have the consistency. So it could be three winners, and then four forehands straight into the fence. But she can go deep solely because of her power, her height, her athleticism.”
Rybakina has the best serve of the three and seems to have cracked the code to defeat Swiatek, the dominant female player for the past 18 months. She was asked last week at Wimbledon what she thought of the Big Three tag. “I think it’s too early to say anything about just three players, because it’s not like it was with Roger or Djokovic,” Rybakina replied. “It’s still too far. Anyone can still beat anyone.”
As Evert said, the emergence of three young players – Sabalenka is 25, Rybakina, 24, and Swiatek, 22 – is timely for women’s tennis, as the game moves out of the long shadow of Serena Williams. It also comes at a moment when questions continue to be asked about why female players are routinely paid less than their male counterparts.
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There is equal prize money only at certain events, which, since 2007, include the four grand-slam tournaments. Elsewhere, there can be a gaping disparity: at the 2023 Italian Open, for example, Rybakina earned £445,000 for her victory, compared with £945,000 for Daniil Medvedev, the men’s champion.
At this year’s Madrid Open, Sabalenka and Carlos Alcaraz celebrated their birthday on the same day: Alcaraz was presented with a multi-tier cake on a golden table; Sabalenka’s was more understated.
The Women’s Tennis Association, the pioneering organisation which this year celebrates its 50th birthday, announced last month that it expects to see equal pay at all higher-level events by 2033.
Whether Swiatek, Sabalenka and Rybakina will still be battling it out then – not to forget others from the new generation, such as Coco Gauff and Emma Raducanu – is, of course, impossible to predict. Likewise, how many major titles they will have collectively won by that point. Critics of the idea of the New Big Three point out that Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have collectively won 65 grand-slam titles; Swiatek and co have a long way to go.
“It’s hard to think that it’s going to be something like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have had,” says Schett, showing some caution. “So we will only find out in about 10 years if this is going to be a rivalry. And then we can call it the Big Three. But it would be lovely to see that, of course, and a little bit more competition.”
