The only active player from the big four still competing is Novak Djokovic, who appears to be approaching retirement<\/a> himself.<\/p>\n Someone who has competed against all four players is now Madrid Open tournament director Feliciano Lopez<\/a>, who has explained why Nadal<\/a> was the player he liked playing the most.<\/p>\n Lopez<\/a> has reached a career-high of world number 12, and played on the ATP Tour<\/a> for 26 years before officially retiring in 2023.<\/p>\n When discussing his experience of playing against the big four, Lopez explained how differently he found being on the opposite side of the court from the likes of Nadal, Murray, Djokovic and Federer.<\/p>\n Lopez spoke about why he hated playing against Murray, before explaining that he found competing against his compatriot Nadal more comfortable.<\/p>\n The now 43-year-old then heaped praise on Djokovic, particularly highlighting how difficult it was to serve against both him and Federer.<\/p>\n \u201cAndy [Murray], for example, I hated [playing] him,\u201d Lopez said on the Punto de Break podcast. \u201cBecause Andy has two things, one very intelligent and two is very skilful. So he understood my game very well, my slice, my serve, my changes of speed, a little bit of my changes of rhythm that most players were uncomfortable with, but he wasn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t like playing with him very much then\u2026<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026With Rafa it felt on fast indoor or fast courts, or grass, sometimes the game was even in the sense that he was not a player who would overwhelm you with his way of playing\u2026he depended a little more on me. Obviously most of the time he ends up winning the game, because he is better, much better than me, but I felt that if I played well that day\u2026I had my chances of beating him.<\/p>\n \u201cIn fact, it\u2019s the (only) one I\u2019ve won against them, because I\u2019ve played Federer a million times. I\u2019ve played great matches, I\u2019ve never managed to beat him, but I\u2019ve brought out the best in me\u2026I really liked playing with him. We\u2019ve known each other since we were kids, we played as juniors, so of course he was an infinitely better player than me, but when I was good I could play him as an equal. Not in every game we\u2019ve played, because there have been many, I have played him as an equal in some.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then Djokovic has one thing and that is that you don\u2019t know where to hit the ball. Because with Rafa at a certain point I say, \u2018Well, I serve and when I play at the baseline I take my forehand and look for his backhand and hit hard and I am aggressive\u2019. With Djokovic, you never felt like the point was in your hand.<\/p>\n \u201cThe control of the match was always on the other side, because forehand and backhand\u2026there\u2019s not space, you don\u2019t know where to hit the ball\u2026He serves, when he serves, he dominates, but when he served, I served, and I was one of the best servers on the circuit, even so I felt extra pressure, because Federer returned a lot, Rafa was very good, but you were given much more time.<\/p>\n \u201cFor example, Rafa was much further back and Federer, Djokovic and Murray were returning on the line. So that put extra pressure on me, saying, if I don\u2019t serve well the ball will come to me quickly. And that made me feel\u2026When they took time away from me, that\u2019s when I felt most uncomfortable, and that\u2019s what Federer and Djokovic did very well was that, they took time away from you, that is the ball from the moment you hit it until it came back to you, came to you much faster than with the others. <\/p>\n \u201cSo, and if you add to the fact that Djokovic missed very little, very little, because Federer sometimes gave away one ball more than another, because he also took more risks with his shots, he looked for different things. Instead, Djokovic said, \u2018Well, just pray and have the best day you can have and that\u2019s it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Feliciano Lopez\u2019s Head-to-Head record vs the Big Four<\/p>\n Lopez played the big four members 48 times in his career, winning just five times.<\/p>\n He was unable to ever get a single match win against Federer and Murray, but did win matches against Nadal and Djokovic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Supporting his claim about Nadal, Lopez was able to get four victories over his fellow Spaniard, with all of his wins coming on either hard, grass or carpet courts.<\/p>\n Lopez\u2019s only win over Djokovic came in 2016, when his Serbian opponent retired due to an eye problem after losing the first set of their quarterfinal match in Dubai.<\/p>\n Feliciano Lopez Head-to-HeadVs Rafael Nadal10-4 NadalVs Novak Djokovic9-1 DjokovicVs Roger Federer13-0 FedererVs Andy Murray11-0 MurrayOverall 43-5 Big Four<\/p>\n Now after retiring from tennis, Lopez is the tournament director for both the Madrid Open<\/a> and Davis Cup<\/a> Finals.<\/p>\n This year will be the first of Lopez\u2019s three scheduled duties as the tournament director for the Davis Cup, with the event taking place in Bologna, Italy.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Andy Murray have dominated men\u2019s tennis in the 21st century. Federer,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[7578,6733,49,48,9322,2083,7627,2189,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-9093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-andy-murray","9":"tag-atp","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-feliciano-lopez","13":"tag-novak-djokovic","14":"tag-rafael-nadal","15":"tag-roger-federer","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Rafael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2217031530-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Franco Arland\/Getty ImagesFeliciano Lopez reveals why he preferred playing Rafael Nadal<\/p>\n![\"Rafael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-484662330-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Maddie Meyer\/Getty Images<\/p>\n