The book is a blast, Nathan\u2019s prose as spectacular as the shotmaking of his protagonists. Winners are dispatched on every page. You can read more of his work at\u00a0Defector, an independent sports website<\/a> and rare media success story of recent years. (Google \u2018Jim Spanfeller is a herb\u2019 for more.) But first, enjoy the insights from one of the sharpest minds in tennis on the sport\u2019s two brightest stars.<\/p>\n Square mile: Congratulations on such a prescient book. If 2024 was the changeover, I guess you\u2019d call 2025 the consolidation, right?<\/p>\n Giri Nathan: Yeah, I think that\u2019s fair. I\u2019m writing a short introduction to accompany the paperback version that comes out next year, and I don\u2019t really know what to add because 2025 was so much of a repetition of 2024. You have Sinner and Alcaraz breaking away from the pack even more, you have Djokovic in this second class unto himself, and then you\u2019ve got everyone else after them. It\u2019s very much a continuation of the same themes.<\/p>\n SM: Was there a particular match or moment that inspired the book?<\/p>\n GN: I think it was that quarterfinal match between Sinner and Alcaraz at the US Open 2022<\/a>, which I describe in the prologue. Stupidly, I went home and watched it on my sofa instead of watching live, even though I\u2019d been on the grounds that day. After all those years of wondering what the future was going to look like, that match was the clearest glimpse.<\/p>\n Those two players seemed capable of technical skills that I hadn\u2019t seen from any player in their age cohort. A mental fortitude that I had not seen from anyone in that age cohort. The creativity and athleticism that was really infectious to watch for anyone lucky enough to see that match live. You watch tennis your whole life hoping to catch a match like that.<\/p>\n I had the idea in the back of my head and then it was a matter of timing. By the end of 2023, Alcaraz had already made his big leap, Sinner was starting to rise to meet him. That was the moment I decided to start putting together the proposal for the book.<\/p>\n The way the tour looks right now, I have a hard time seeing any of their peers unseating these two guys at a slam next year<\/p>\n SM: Before Sinner wins the 2024 Australian Open?<\/p>\n GN: Yeah, a couple of months before. He had gone on a really long winning streak at the end of 2023, he had beaten Djokovic in the Davis Cup and the ATP finals. Djokovic is the true gatekeeper for any young tennis player. The fact that Sinner was able to beat him twice in quick succession was the evidence that I needed to move forward.<\/p>\n SM: It\u2019s funny they only played three times in 2024, and never in a slam final\u2026<\/p>\n GN: Narratively speaking, it was kind of nice they had yet to meet in the final of a Slam. It was like, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re building up to this point and then once we get it, it\u2019s going to be phenomenal.\u2019\u00a0We got it this spring at the French Open<\/a> and it was indeed phenomenal.<\/p>\n SM: Watching that match, you must have been tempted to write a sequel?<\/p>\n GN: Hundred percent. It\u2019s that mix of, \u2018Well, I\u2019m really glad that I called it\u2019, but \u2018I could add three more chapters to this book right now.\u2019 Using the 2024 season as a framing device was good because I could have just been on this infinite treadmill to keep updating it, updating it, updating it. I\u2019m working on this epilogue now. I have had months to digest that match and put it into the context that it deserves.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n SM: You open the book with a\u00a0Philip Larkin poem The Trees<\/a> that ends with the line: \u201cbegin afresh, afresh, afresh.\u201d It nicely encapsulates this new generation and also the yearly tennis cycle\u2026<\/p>\n GN: As we head into the off-season, it\u2019s a time for players to renew their hope and take on bigger goals for the season ahead. But the way the tour looks right now, I have a hard time seeing any of their peers unseating these two guys at a slam next year. Maybe the year after, but next year, I don\u2019t think anyone\u2019s close enough to pull it off. Maybe you can take one of them out but two of them seems too much to ask.<\/p>\n SM: There\u2019s a temptation to portray Alcaraz as the Federer and Nadal lovechild, and Sinner as Uber Djokovic. It\u2019s reductive but is it entirely unfair?<\/p>\n GN: There\u2019s a reason those descriptors have stuck around. Anytime you\u2019re trying to make sense of a new player at the beginning of their career, it does help to have some frameworks from the past.<\/p>\n I would say their development as players was shaped by the excellence of those older players who had accomplished so much by the time they were being funnelled into the developmental pipeline. So it was possible for a coach to see the way that, say, Djokovic slides on a hard court and think maybe this is a movement pattern that we can develop in our young players. So it\u2019s not incidental, the resemblance.<\/p>\n I think the slide is the signal innovation of Djokovic\u2019s tennis in the last 10, 15 years. He showed there\u2019s a way to hit offensive shots from defensive positions using this innovative footwork. Sinner and Alcaraz are two of the only young players who seem as comfortable as Djokovic in those deep splits, sliding in and out of the corners.<\/p>\n They really are singular talents that come around a couple times in a generation, and perhaps we rolled double sixes twice in a row<\/p>\n It\u2019s one of the things that makes them so dangerous. They can run all the way to the corner of the court and yet not be out of the point because they\u2019re hitting an offensive shot and the slide allows them to recover a half second faster.<\/p>\n The Federer-Nadal lovechild thing I think is equally true. When he was in his late career, Federer kept looking for young players who wanted to attack the net with conviction. He saw it in Stefan Tsitsipas <\/a>but it\u2019s there in a much higher magnitude with Alcaraz. The way he\u2019s so comfortable moving forward in the court and his ingenuity and improvisation with his volleys and half volleys and drop shots.<\/p>\n It feels like some of the Federer instincts taken to even more dramatic extremes. A lot of Rafa as well: the physicality, the top spin. So I think both of those comparisons are entirely fair and probably rooted in some direct inspiration from those players.<\/p>\n SM: We had the Big Three era, now it\u2019s Sinner-Alcaraz. Was their emergence an inevitable result of sporting evolution, or has tennis basically hit the jackpot twice?<\/p>\n GN: It\u2019s a really good question. I think the partial answer is that the reward system of the sport is structured to greatly favour the successful players. It\u2019s kind of a \u2018rich-get-richer\u2019 sport. The winnings are super concentrated in the top 15, 20 players on tour, and then it falls off pretty dramatically. If you\u2019re 80, 90 in the world, you might be breaking even by touring.<\/p>\n Once you do break into the top, you have a payroll that can get you the best trainers in the world, best nutritionists, sports psychologists. Whatever talent advantage you already had is being amplified, multiplied by what your resources can buy you. So I think that\u2019s part of why we tend to see the eras of dominance with these same players popping up over and over again.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s definitely not the full explanation. At some level they really are singular talents that come around a couple times in a generation, and perhaps we rolled double sixes twice in a row.<\/p>\n Credit: corleve \/ Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n SM: Who got lucky they weren\u2019t born a decade earlier? These two or the Big Three?<\/p>\n GN: That\u2019s one I thought about a lot over the last five years. There was a window where the Big Three were more beatable than the results made it appear to be. I think there was a huge psychological element, entering the match feeling that you\u2019ve already lost. You\u2019ve held these guys on a pedestal for so long, you don\u2019t realistically see yourself beating them.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a line in the book that Francis Tiafoe says: it\u2019s like a Mount Rushmore effect where these are faces that have been on posters in your bedroom since you were ten years old. There\u2019s something very psychologically deflating. Sinner and Alcaraz have benefited from having that respect, but not having it put limits on what they think they can accomplish.<\/p>\n SM: You quote Tiafoe saying he isn\u2019t intimidated by these younger guys \u2013 I imagine a mentality shared by many players. Do you think it survived 2025? \u2192<\/p>\n GN: I made sure to include as many of those quotes as I could because I knew that sentiment wasn\u2019t going to last very long. There\u2019s one from Taylor Fritz where he\u2019s like, \u201cI actually like playing against Sinner. I feel like he hits a good ball for me.\u201d I thought, we\u2019ll see how long he stands by that. He loses to Sinner in the US Open final a couple of weeks later. Fritz probably plays the best match I\u2019ve ever seen him play and loses in straight sets.<\/p>\n I wanted to capture that brief moment in time where they actually did seem beatable, before that sense of inevitability set in among their peers. 2024 was the season when their aura was still solidifying. By 2025 you started getting some quotes, not of outright futility like in the middle of the Big Three era, but the early feelings of futility \u2013 \u2018I don\u2019t know what I have to do to keep up with these guys.\u2019 A lot of those optimistic sentiments you heard in 2024 maybe didn\u2019t survive to the end of 2025.<\/p>\n We had a long time in men\u2019s tennis where there were no prodigies because the game was so physically demanding<\/p>\n SM: You write a brilliant chapter on Daniil Medvedev <\/a>who embodies the frustration of his generation of players\u2026<\/p>\n GN: That late-twenties cohort probably thought they were going to inherit everything once Djokovic finally hung it up. But that was a very false impression because they could not have anticipated just how good these guys were going to be so early in their careers.<\/p>\n Factor in the late-twenties guys may now be in physical decline. It\u2019s possible they have physically peaked and the remaining improvements they have to make are purely technical. Whereas I think Sinner and Alcaraz are still a few years from their physical peak, which is kind of scary.<\/p>\n SM: I saw Alcaraz practice at Queen\u2019s Club. He\u2019s built like a tank\u2026<\/p>\n GN: He\u2019s a big dude. There was the off season from 2021 into 2022, I think, when he was working with his physical trainer. The quote he gave was something like, \u201cI turned him from a boy into a man.\u201d He came in looking like 15 pounds heavier from November to January, which should be physically impossible but there\u2019s a lot of things that guy does that should be physically impossible.<\/p>\n One other detail that could separate these two players from the past eras is the physical training side of sport has developed quite a bit, I would say, from the early aughts when the Big Three were coming out. There is a much more holistic sense of what kind of work needs to be done in the gym and what will have a direct translation onto the tennis court.<\/p>\n We had a long time in men\u2019s tennis where there were no prodigies because the game was so physically demanding; you had to wait for players to enter their mid-twenties to win a major title. These two are well ahead of schedule in terms of their physical development. There\u2019s a lot more forward thinking than there used to be and so much more money in the sport. I keep circling back to that, but I think it\u2019s a big deal because you can afford to have people thinking really hard about the things you need to do.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n SM:\u00a0Andre Agassi wrote in his autobiography<\/a> how he used to do endurance running. Then he hires a new trainer who gets him doing short, explosive sprints, much more suitable for tennis. Obvious now but a revelation in the 1990s\u2026<\/p>\n GN: I think about that anecdote all the time. That trainer Gil Reyes was coming into tennis from basketball. He already understood that for athletes, you don\u2019t have to run five miles at a slow tempo. You need to be sprinting, stopping, accelerating, decelerating. He correctly diagnosed all the similarities between a basketball court and a tennis court.<\/p>\n The innovation he brought with Agassi was building his lower body in a way that allowed Agassi to kind of sit on top of the baseline, use the strength of his lower body and just take the ball super early and dominate baseline rallies. Djokovic has an extension of that same legacy. Sinner and Alcaraz have just taken that and run with it.<\/p>\n The things they do are so specifically tailored to what you need to do to be good at tennis. It\u2019s not anything to do with someone\u2019s impression of general fitness. You might think a civilian should be able to run four or five miles at a good tempo but that actually has very little to do with what a tennis point is.<\/p>\n Who knows? Maybe there could be actual resentments bubbling under the surface that they\u2019re not willing to voice<\/p>\n SM: There\u2019s a lot of Djokovic in the book. He\u2019s such a compelling figure\u2026<\/p>\n GN: I don\u2019t think they will be making them like Djokovic anymore. I am very interested in the class angle of professional tennis. Federer and Nadal were coming from pretty well-heeled middle class to upper-class backgrounds in Western Europe versus Djokovic coming out of the Yugoslavia Wars. His father was taking money from loan sharks to make his career work.<\/p>\n It was a very different trajectory to reach the same point in professional tennis. And I think that sensibility of breaking in as outsider, none of this was taken as a given, very much shaped who he is. It makes me more sympathetic to some of the defiance and perhaps spiteful or cantankerous moments he\u2019s had on a tennis court.<\/p>\n You might think, \u2018What could this guy possibly have left to prove?\u2019 And then you think about where he came from and it\u2019s a little easier to sympathise with. This is a guy who\u2019s gone back to the tennis courts, the hitting walls he\u2019s trained on as a child, and he\u2019s found they\u2019re in ruins, they were bombed by Nato.<\/p>\n So there\u2019s a real scrappiness and resourcefulness that makes him more of an endearing figure to me. The trend in pro athletes now is to sand away your eccentricities, remain palatable and marketable. He seems very unwilling to do that. For better and for worse.<\/p>\n Corleve \/ Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n SM: Could a young athlete with the spiky personality of Djokovic, or even Agassi, thrive in the social media age?<\/p>\n GN: We\u2019re in this era of super-curated personal brands. You do the Netflix documentary where you get personal say over what makes it in, you tell exactly the propaganda narrative that you want to tell. As fans there may be some pendulum swing in the other direction where you start craving some kind of uncensored or unfettered authenticity. One of the reasons I am drawn to a Medvedev type is because he\u2019s so utterly unconcerned with his marketability and he\u2019s so committed to saying whatever is on the top of his mind at any given time.<\/p>\n I remember a time when athletes were talking crazy shit to each other. I grew up with the NBA of the early 2000s. There was a lot of trash talking. I have a craving for that sometimes, watching sports these days. You get a more civil discourse on tour, you have the Sinner-Alcaraz friendship or what appears to be a friendship on the surface. But who knows? Maybe there could be actual resentments bubbling under the surface that they\u2019re not willing to voice because they\u2019re both so concerned with, say, being the face of Nike for the next 15 years or whatever.<\/p>\n I happen to think we\u2019re in an absolute dead zone for learning and saying interesting things about athletes and most people in public life. The curation and carefulness and caution is at an all-time high. But I would love to see things move in a different direction going forward. The access you get to these athletes has absolutely cratered the last few years, to the point where I genuinely had to figure out if writing a book like this was even viable.<\/p>\n At the end of the day, the things they say aren\u2019t actually that interesting. So it\u2019s more about contextualising it and providing history and commentary and technical breakdown and all this stuff that I had fun doing in the book. Selfishly, I do hope things open up a little bit. That these athletes and their teams realise that independent journalists, filmmakers, there is a value to that. You get a more complex nuanced portrait than you would get posting photos on Instagram.<\/p>\n With more serious fans, you\u2019re starting to hear a few complaints of tedium. No one else can even win a tournament<\/p>\n SM: There\u2019s something poetic about Djokovic exiting the sport the same way he entered \u2013 the unwelcome third man attempting to break a beloved duopoly<\/a>. He won three slams as recently as 2023\u2026<\/p>\n GN: Things are trending in very much the wrong direction for him. It goes so fast. The other wild thing is he has played an unprecedentedly streamlined schedule in 2025. Just Roland Garros, Wimbledon, US Open. I couldn\u2019t find a historical precedent, a player just playing those three events. That\u2019s how good he is. The only things that brought him down in these slams were his own hamstrings and Jannik Sinner, twice.<\/p>\n SM: Do you think the Sinner-Alcaraz duopoly is good for tennis?<\/p>\n GN: That\u2019s a very good question. I think the answer varies depending on what layer of fandom you occupy. If you are a casual fan who\u2019s just tuning into the semi-finals, finals of these tournaments, there is some comfort \u2013 you turn on the TV, you know the narratives, which of these two guys you like. There\u2019s no homework on your part. And the charisma that they have when playing each other does loop in more and more of those casual fans.<\/p>\n With more serious fans, you\u2019re starting to hear a few complaints of tedium. No one else can even win a tournament. And the hardcore fans, they\u2019re already looking ahead to the future, to the 19-year-old players on tour such as Jo\u00e3o Fonseca and Learner Tien to try to figure out who\u2019s going to be the one to break through.<\/p>\n But for the architects of the tour and the people who sell the sports to the masses, I think they\u2019re all pretty excited by these last two seasons of dominance. Right when all the old household names were phasing out, they got two immediate household names. That transition has been pretty seamless and effortless. But I think the more nuanced answer is a lot more interesting and one that I hope to dig into maybe in a future book or an article.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n SM: A homegrown player like Jack Draper winning Wimbledon or Ben Shelton winning the US Open would be massive. Those guys are the same generation as Sinner and Alcaraz so can it even happen?<\/p>\n GN: Yeah, the age thing is what I keep coming back to. It\u2019s hard to see how they will both make up the ground and then outpace these guys who are only going to get better, and will probably get better at a faster rate than they get better. It really is kind of an arms race that seems to be just between them.<\/p>\n SM: One of the most insane statistics in sports is that only two male players born in the 1990s have won a slam.<\/p>\n GN: It\u2019s absolutely outrageous. An entire generation was just swallowed up. I won\u2019t immediately rule out Medvedev this time, and I\u2019m obviously interested enough to write a whole chapter about him, but things are really not trending in the right direction for him, either. This is a guy who as recently as 2024 was beating Sinner at Wimbledon. Right now he is wrapping up a season where he won exactly one match at the major tournaments. So it\u2019s hard to see those late twenties guys closing the gap.<\/p>\n SM: People love the Sinner-Alcaraz bromance but might a little more animosity between them add to the spectacle?<\/p>\n GN: It would be very entertaining and to my layman\u2019s perspective, it would be a lot more understandable. In these rare situations where it does boil down to just two players who more or less know they have to beat the other guy to win any title of note, I do find it hard to believe that they can remain completely decent and civil in all of their innermost thoughts about one another. I feel like there must be some kind of resentments playing under the surface.<\/p>\n As a fan, it would be pretty captivating if those occasionally broke through from time to time. Even if they did ultimately maintain that sportsmanship and respect, blah, blah, blah. Even if they maintain good terms with each other, I would like to see the occasional moment where that facade breaks and we see a little bit more of the completely understandable human emotions that might arise in such pressurised situations.<\/p>\n I think that would be cool, but maybe that\u2019s really not who these guys are. I don\u2019t know the answer yet. I still can\u2019t rule conclusively whether these guys are so polite and decent all the way down or whether that\u2019s all they\u2019ve shown to the world so far in their very limited time in the public spotlight.<\/p>\n If you are a person who seems to love life the way Carlos Alcaraz does, why would he be doing this at age 37?<\/p>\n SM: Will a third player emerge in the next two, three years? And who\u2019s the most likely candidate if so?<\/p>\n![\"Carlos](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/695d7ba24f652.jpg\" "\\"Carlos")
<\/p>\n![\"Jannik](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/695d7ba2c4aa0.jpg\" "\\"Jannik")
<\/p>\n
![\"Alcaraz](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/695d7ba244887.jpg\" "\\"Alcaraz")
<\/p>\n