{"id":239563,"date":"2025-10-25T09:26:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T09:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/239563\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T09:26:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T09:26:20","slug":"i-played-against-federer-nadal-and-djokovic-one-player-was-even-harder-to-beat-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/239563\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I played against Federer, Nadal and Djokovic – one player was even harder to beat’ | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger Federer<\/a>, Rafael Nadal<\/a> and Novak Djokovic spent the better part of two decades dominating tennis. Between them, they\u2019ve won 66 Grand Slam titles and spent a combined 947 weeks sharing the world No. 1 ranking.<\/p>\n

They denied plenty of top players the chance to win the sport\u2019s biggest titles, including Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the former world No. 5, who lost his only Grand Slam final to Djokovic at the 2008 Australian Open<\/a>. But Tsonga has now claimed that one player posed an even tougher challenge on the tennis court.<\/p>\n

The Frenchman had a losing head-to-head against the Big Three but still managed to beat them multiple times, ending his career with a 6-12 record against Federer, a 4-10 record against Nadal, and a 6-17 record against Djokovic.<\/p>\n

While Tsonga was able to trouble the multi-Grand Slam champions at times, he fared much worse against Andy Murray<\/a>. The former world No. 5 won just two of their 16 meetings, suggesting that the Brit was able to neutralise all his weapons in a way that Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, that\u2019s because my strengths would play right into his own strengths,\u201d Tsonga told Univers Tennis.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I was serving well but then he returned well. I liked to play by changing the rhythm but it wasn\u2019t bothering him. If I hit a chip, he would just chip it back. So you know what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray is known for his high tennis IQ, and Tsonga believes it\u2019s just another reason the three-time Major winner was such a difficult opponent.<\/p>\n

The 40-year-old added: \u201cHe plays the right shot, generally speaking as a player, he sure did. He was often able to block me, pretty fine tactician.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got going and really turned on the power, even then, he was able to find spots that would shut me down. So naturally it\u2019s him who bothered me a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tsonga\u2019s first-ever win over Murray came in the 2008 Australian Open<\/a> quarter-finals, and was just their second career meeting. The French star waited another eight years to beat the three-time Major winner, sending Murray packing in the Canadian Open quarters.<\/p>\n

Murray beat Tsonga at Grand Slams, the ATP Finals, Masters 1000 tournaments, smaller tour-level events, and even in Davis Cup ties.<\/p>\n

Both men have since retired from professional tennis, with Tsonga hanging up his racket at the 2022 French Open. Two years later, Murray also said farewell at Stade Roland Garros, ending his career during the 2024 Olympics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic spent the better part of two decades dominating tennis. Between them,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[3581,64,63,143204,3592,964,965,85,747,750],"class_list":["post-239563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-andy-murray","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-jo-wilfried-tsonga","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-roger-federer","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}