Are the Next Gen at their peaks?

Should we consider the “Next Gen” the “Now Gen”?

  • No, they already passed their peaks some time ago. All downhill from here.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    47

Third Serve

Talk Tennis Guru
Just to clarify, I refer to the batch of players that range from, say, Medvedev’s age (25) to Shapovalov’s age (22). You could make a case for Kyrgios (age 26) being in this generation too.

For years we’ve talked about how they’ll be the next big thing in tennis and how they’re just about to enter their peaks and start taking over the tour. Well, that hasn’t happened and you can blame Djokovic or their collective mediocrity (or both) for that. Either way, that isn’t what this thread is getting at. Not directly, at least.

These guys are in their early-to-mid-20’s now. They’re not rising teenagers or players who have just hit the 20-year mark like the tennis generation after them (which would probably consist of Auger-Aliassime, Sinner, Musetti, Alcaraz, and a few others). They’re players who are at what should be their peak physical prowess, based on how previous generations have fared in their early 20’s.

Alright, now maybe we can say that times have changed and players are maturing later in this increasingly physical game. And that is true, to a certain extent. We aren’t gonna see teenage Slam champions like Becker, Wilander, and others anymore just due to how the game has changed to favor more physically mature players. Nadal is just about the only exception in recent history and that guy was a freak of nature. So yeah, the game is much less kind to ascendant teenagers, which is why I don’t really fault the gen-after-next-gen for the missteps some of them have made.

But I think it’s a completely different argument when we’re talking about the Medvedev/Zverev/Tsitsipas generation of players who are in their early-20’s. By all accounts, they should be in their primes. And we don’t really need to reach all the way back to the 80’s or 90’s to see examples of players hitting their peaks at that age. Just take a look at the previous generation, often called the “Lost Gen” around here, because they aren’t that far away from the next gen in age. Its most successful members include Dimitrov (age 30), Raonic (30), Nishikori (31), and Thiem (27, soon to be 28; there is still room for him). Let’s look at those four:

Dimitrov’s best seasons were 2014 and 2017 I think. He put in his best performances at the Slams in those years (minus a couple of fluke QF-SF runs in 2018-2021), pushing Nadal and Djokovic to tight and reasonably high-quality matches. In 2017, he also took home his sole Masters and WTF win, though the field was admittedly terrible at that point in time. He was 23 and 26 in those years, respectively.

Raonic’s best season was 2016 without a doubt, but he also had a great 2014 season just like Dimitrov. I remember him being incredibly consistent throughout most of the big events (he made QF or better in 7 of the 9 Masters and 2 of the 4 Slams). So he was 23 and 25 in those years (he’s about six months older than Dimitrov).

Nishikori’s best season was probably 2014 when he made his sole Slam final, but he was (until quite recently) a very consistent player who gathered nice, solid results in the following years as well: 2015, 2016, and 2018. That’d put him at ages 24, 25, 26, and 28.

Thiem peaked a lot later than the rest of his group but he’s also on the younger side of the Lost Gen. His best season was definitely 2020, but he had good 2018 and 2019 seasons as well. Might even throw 2017 in there. In fact, let’s do that. So that’d be ages 24, 25, 26, and 27. He still has room to add more prime seasons to the tally, but odds are that his 2021 season won’t fit in among them.

I think it’s safe to say that we have a good prime estimate for all of these guys except maybe Thiem, and we’re seeing a common trend here. Their best seasons generally fall from age 23 to age 28 (with a lean towards the front end of the scale) which looks a bit later than previous generations but we’re still looking at a roughly similar prime period here, a period that Medvedev, Zverev, Berrettini, and (in less than a month) Tsitsipas all find themselves in. Their results seem to line up with that as well, only they generally hit good streaks of form even earlier than the Lost Gen (but that could be because they’re just better players overall). Shapovalov falls on the younger side of the Next Gen spectrum but in a year or so, he’ll be in that “prime age”. Sure, I suppose there are outliers like Wawrinka who didn’t hit his stride till he was in his late 20’s. But they’re just that: exceptions to the rule. Stan’s own peers generally started playing their best tennis in their early 20’s.

I just thought it was kind of interesting to bring this up because the next gen talk was all well and good in 2016-2018 when they really were very young. But I don’t think it makes sense now, at least not since 2019, because all of these players are at around the age at which the vast majority of players from all sorts of eras generally perform at their best. So do we think that same rule applies to them and that they are indeed at their peaks? That is, have they really reached their ceilings? Or do we think they’ll improve even more in the following years, living up to their “Next Gen” label? Or is it a bit of a mix, as I think? I doubt Medvedev and Zverev can continue to improve (Zverev could have done that back in 2019 but he actually regressed rather than progressed), but there’s just a little bit of potential left for the 22-(and soon to be 23)-year-old Tsitsipas and Shapovalov. What does TT make of this?
 
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King No1e

G.O.A.T.
First of all, one of the genuinely best threads I've seen on this site in a while.

I'm not really holding my breath on Medvedev, Zverev, Berrettini etc anymore. They may yet win a Slam or 2 and become #1 soon, but it's too late in their careers for me to still expect some big breakthrough. Tsitsipas and Shapovalov still have some time, but even they're starting a little late. Sinner and FAA remain to be seen, but so far I haven't seen enough to make any big predictions.

Unfortunately we just don't seem to have anyone with the consistency and mentality to rise up yet. Every other era had at least a few such players. This era has none, hence the severely declined dinosaurs of a past era continue to dominate by default. Yes, they're remarkably good but this level of Fedalovic domination says more about the field.
This is the kind of power vacuum that leaves room for a Federer-like figure to show up and just blow everyone out of the water for years. I do see that potential in Shapovalov, but whether he gets it together mentally is a different story.
 

Kralingen

Bionic Poster
Great thread idea: I was thinking recently how 24-year old Djokovic (regarded as a late bloomer in every circle) won 3 Slams over way tougher competition than exists today. I don't expect any NextGen to have a breakout season like that but it's interesting that at 24 he was able to make a significant change to his approach and win consistently. Very, very few players in the history of tennis did that. And yet it seems we expect that from 5-6 NextGen players?

In order of peakest to least peak

Berrettini - imo has maxed out what he's going to be, similar to Raonic in that respect. He is a WB finalist though so no shame in this being his peak.
Medvedev - he will improve on clay and grass but I don't know if he can really get better. He can certainly have less lapses mentally but not much else
Tsitsipas - His return is shocking, honestly. I really don't know if he can get that together and it will always cap his game. I don't think he can actually add much except maybe conditioning and stability to his game, but he's already had a lot of success. Believe it or not I don't see him improving much, but will likely start to win more.

Then we get into the weird zone, I call it the mental midget realm: Zverev, Shapovalov, FAA
All 3 have a lot of talent but either need new coaches or need a complete re-doing of their mentality to win matches.

Zverev - still has the highest potential of anyone to me but desperately, desperately needs a new coach. He will be a multi slam winner if he can tweak the serve and mental issues. If he hires a new coach he can peak the highest, if he continues to stay with his Dad I doubt he changes at all.
FAA - I actually don't think he's going to get much better physically. Super developed body and has a big FH and good movement. He's played on the tour for awhile now. Mentally he can become stronger but I don't see the high ceiling with him, he will likely never be a #1 player but can be #4 or #5.
Shapo - he has to calm the hell down every point. He apparently already has a sports psychologist and making the first Slam SF is a good sign. Think he will become more stable if he can fix his serve a bit and stop being such a headcase, and if that happens he has a truly high ceiling. The worry is injuries, as his shoulder has already started to give him issues at age 22. If that deteriorates he will likely never win a Slam. He is the biggest coin flip out of all of these guys.

Also Rublev/Khachanov have already peaked in my eyes.
 

Jonas78

Legend
Players almost always reach their prime between 22 and 25. NextGen is a weak generation but i still have some hope for Shapovalov. The generation after NextGen looks even worse to me, so it seems like a lasting problem. Its also BS that players cant win slams at a young age anymore. Tadej Pogacar just won Tour De France two times in a row at 21 and 22, and Big3 won their first slam at 19,20 and 22.

Tennis is probably not attracting enough talents anymore, which i think also the absence of US players confirms. There is probably also something wrong with the coaching. The older players careers are inflated, and when they finally retire it will be a wide open field.
 
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daggerman

Hall of Fame
They're all quite a bit better than they've been in previous years, but because they've all improved, it might seem like some of them have stagnated. In general, young players are dominating the tour this year; they just haven't won any slams.

I think there are good reasons to believe most of them haven't peaked yet. But some have, I'm afraid. I have concerns about Medvedev's forehand mechanics and Rublev's overall athleticism, though I'm sure both can continue improving at the margins, at the very least. They might also prove me completely wrong, of course.
 
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Kralingen

Bionic Poster
Another point that I haven’t considered is: when do we correlate improved results with improvement as a tennis player? I could easily see a Tsitsipas who plateaus at this level being RG champion in 2024-25 over ancient Djokodal and people crowning him as some clay wunderkind coming into his prime when he hasn’t actually done anything new.

I said this about Berrettini in the WB thread, Federer and Djokovic made him look amateurish at points but they are also two of the only players on tour actually capable of exploiting weaknesses like that. If you’re competing mainly with other NextGens as these guys will be in the mid-2020s, how do we discern actual growth as tennis players? I can’t say Thiem or Zverev are any better today than they were in USO 2020, but they gained their first Slam win and final respectively so were talked about as “making a breakthrough”.

does any of that even matter? If a player has obvious flaws in his game but no one is around to expose them, are they really flaws?

These are the questions we will be forced to reckon with in the new age of tennis.
 

Red Rick

Bionic Poster
The "best" ones are, or close enough to not really matter

I'm interested in how Sinner, Musetti and Alcaraz will develop.
 

Dole

New User
There is too much hate for Shapo and FAA, they’re literally kids compared to the tour. Both have 2-4 years of development before they get into their primes and they look amazing against players who are already peaking so I think their future involves running the tour. Time will tell and hopefully no injuries happen to derail their growth. Very excited for Canadian Tennis
 
The 22-25 years old already hit their level cap.

That can at least be said about Medvedev's form between Paris Masters and AO, as well as Tsitsipas the whole clay season.

I think it's mostly a matter of how consistent they can be from now on.

Maybe we are gonna see some improvements on their worse surfaces as we go on.
 

Dole

New User
The 22-25 years old already hit their level cap.

That can at least be said about Medvedev's form between Paris Masters and AO, as well as Tsitsipas the whole clay season.

I think it's mostly a matter of how consistent they can be from now on.

Maybe we are gonna see some improvements on their worse surfaces as we go on.
No way, maybe speed but not power and shot selection. While I don’t think he would have won regardless I do think however that Shapo could have made Novak’s life harder at Wimbledon by being better at the net (he lost some easy shot) which will come with experience
 

Subway Tennis

G.O.A.T.
Players almost always reach their prime between 22 and 25. NextGen is a weak generation but i still have some hope for Shapovalov. The generation after NextGen looks even worse to me, so it seems like a lasting problem. Its also BS that players cant win slams at a young age anymore. Tadej Pogacar just won Tour De France two times in a row at 21 and 22, and Big3 won their first slam at 19,20 and 22.

Tennis is probably not attracting enough talents anymore, which i think also the absence of US players confirms. There is probably also something wrong with the coaching. The older players careers are inflated, and when they finally retire it will be a wide open field.

Pogacar was helped several times by a fantastic team at this years TDF, a team that includes older and more experienced riders who can help him at several stages. He is also on some of the best gas in the world! :sneaky:

Don't get me wrong he is a phenomenal athlete in an extremely tough sport, but he is not a good Point of comparison for the plight of a similar-aged player in an individual sport like tennis.
 

Red Rick

Bionic Poster
Pogacar was helped several times by a fantastic team at this years TDF, a team that includes older and more experienced riders who can help him at several stages. He is also on some of the best gas in the world! :sneaky:

Don't get me wrong he is a phenomenal athlete in an extremely tough sport, but he is not a good Point of comparison for the plight of a similar-aged player in an individual sport like tennis.
Players almost always reach their prime between 22 and 25. NextGen is a weak generation but i still have some hope for Shapovalov. The generation after NextGen looks even worse to me, so it seems like a lasting problem. Its also BS that players cant win slams at a young age anymore. Tadej Pogacar just won Tour De France two times in a row at 21 and 22, and Big3 won their first slam at 19,20 and 22.
Why cycling is seeing a rapid breakthrough of extremely young talents is a whole other discussion. But it largely used to be they would only slowly figure out how to train properly, which is so much easier now with modern power data and training analytics. This also makes it easier to discover talent earlier and put them on a top notch PED program earlier. Lastly there's been a huge shift in PED programs in the last ~2 years in cycling which has really phased out the old guard of top dogs really quickly.

So in short none of these reasons apply to tennis.
 

daggerman

Hall of Fame
Another point that I haven’t considered is: when do we correlate improved results with improvement as a tennis player? I could easily see a Tsitsipas who plateaus at this level being RG champion in 2024-25 over ancient Djokodal and people crowning him as some clay wunderkind coming into his prime when he hasn’t actually done anything new.

I said this about Berrettini in the WB thread, Federer and Djokovic made him look amateurish at points but they are also two of the only players on tour actually capable of exploiting weaknesses like that. If you’re competing mainly with other NextGens as these guys will be in the mid-2020s, how do we discern actual growth as tennis players? I can’t say Thiem or Zverev are any better today than they were in USO 2020, but they gained their first Slam win and final respectively so were talked about as “making a breakthrough”.

does any of that even matter? If a player has obvious flaws in his game but no one is around to expose them, are they really flaws?

These are the questions we will be forced to reckon with in the new age of tennis.

I think a little data goes a long way. To me, simple Points Won % is a fairly reliable, quick and dirty way of approximating a player's level. I think it's especially useful for tracking improvement (or decline) from one year to the next, since a player's quality of competition isn't likely to dramatically change over two years. If a player wins 52% of their points one year, then jumps to, say, 53.5% the next, to me that's a strong signal of improvement.

And actually, we don't need to use a hypothetical; we've seen a similar leap from Tsitsipas this season:

2019: 51.7%
2020: 52.8%
2021: 54.2%

Medvedev
hasn't demonstrated the same kind of leap this year, but that's because he already made a leap in 2019 and has improved incrementally since then:

2019: 53.2%
2020: 53.7%
2021: 53.9%

For comparison, the Big 3 were consistently winning > 55% of their points during their primes (and still are, at the slams). Can any of the NextGen players reach that bar in the coming years? Do they have to in order to assuage fan skepticism about their slam worthiness?

Let's wait and see what they do. I'm not fully convinced Tsitsipas is a 54% points won player at this stage -- because 54% is actually really high. Think typical Andy Murray prime season. But if my intuition is right, I would expect regression this season rather than in some subsequent season. Either way, if he's winning Roland Garros a few years from now, but it turns out that he's more of a ~53% player (like Thiem on clay), then it would be hard to say he's improved. It would suggest he wouldn't likely have been capable of beating an in-form Nadal or Djokovic.

As tennis fans, we should hope for a couple young 55% players to emerge :)

---

Source: Ultimate Tennis Statistics
 

ibbi

G.O.A.T.
I mean historically 23-26 is definitely the prime age for a player, with particular focus on 24-25:

Average age of AO champion in Open era - 25.9, RG and W - 24.9, USO - 25.5, and these numbers have been skewing up the last 5-6 years, before that they were much closer to 24 than 25.

Go back and look at most great players in said Open Era, and almost across the board with very rare exceptions their best years fit into this age bracket from Connors and Borg in the 70s (who are admittedly on the lower end) to Novak and Andy in 2012-13.

You're right that the Lost Gen all also fit into this age range, but then it's also true that said gen primarily were at said ages prior to the great age shift that really began in 2015-16 with Novak dominating at an older age than had been seen since Laver in 69, Stan having his 3 slam wins, and Andy getting to number 1.

Add on to them the likes of Anderson, and Isner having career best years deep into their 30s, Cilic's 17-18 resurgence right at the tail end of his 20s, Thiem, as you point out, hitting what appeared to be his best only at the end of the prime years, and of course the 17-18 return of the three kings.

Given that I think it's too soon to make such declarative statements about the Next Gen, tennis has changed a LOT in the last 5 years, and for all we know where the likes of Medvedev, Khachanov and Coric are now might be just the beginning ( :-D )

Still, even if not, and this is the best we're going to see from them, I think Med, Zverev and Tsitsipas have pretty much at least matched anything the Lost Gen did, and Stefanos is still on the lower end of that prime scale, and still showing at least minor signs of improvement. Shapovalov also clearly appearing to get better this year, so there's still hope that the best might be yet to come...
 

TearTheRoofOff

G.O.A.T.
At their weaks, more like.
Yeah I doubt Lad is getting better. Zed should but he's a mental mug. Teat will, he's the youngest and has time yet. Copeck, who cares zero slams for the guy anyway.
Honestly hard to see all that much improvement from most over the last few years. Results-wise, perhaps, but Big 3 have taken a collective semi-hike.
 

Dolgopolov85

G.O.A.T.
Just to clarify, I refer to the batch of players that range from, say, Medvedev’s age (25) to Shapovalov’s age (22). You could make a case for Kyrgios (age 26) being in this generation too.

For years we’ve talked about how they’ll be the next big thing in tennis and how they’re just about to enter their peaks and start taking over the tour. Well, that hasn’t happened and you can blame Djokovic or their collective mediocrity (or both) for that. Either way, that isn’t what this thread is getting at. Not directly, at least.

These guys are in their early-to-mid-20’s now. They’re not rising teenagers or players who have just hit the 20-year mark like the tennis generation after them (which would probably consist of Auger-Aliassime, Sinner, Musetti, Alcaraz, and a few others). They’re players who are at what should be their peak physical prowess, based on how previous generations have fared in their early 20’s.

Alright, now maybe we can say that times have changed and players are maturing later in this increasingly physical game. And that is true, to a certain extent. We aren’t gonna see teenage Slam champions like Becker, Wilander, and others anymore just due to how the game has changed to favor more physically mature players. Nadal is just about the only exception in recent history and that guy was a freak of nature. So yeah, the game is much less kind to ascendant teenagers, which is why I don’t really fault the gen-after-next-gen for the missteps some of them have made.

But I think it’s a completely different argument when we’re talking about the Medvedev/Zverev/Tsitsipas generation of players who are in their early-20’s. By all accounts, they should be in their primes. And we don’t really need to reach all the way back to the 80’s or 90’s to see examples of players hitting their peaks at that age. Just take a look at the previous generation, often called the “Lost Gen” around here, because they aren’t that far away from the next gen in age. Its most successful members include Dimitrov (age 30), Raonic (30), Nishikori (31), and Thiem (27, soon to be 28; there is still room for him). Let’s look at those four:

Dimitrov’s best seasons were 2014 and 2017 I think. He put in his best performances at the Slams in those years (minus a couple of fluke QF-SF runs in 2018-2021), pushing Nadal and Djokovic to tight and reasonably high-quality matches. In 2017, he also took home his sole Masters and WTF win, though the field was admittedly terrible at that point in time. He was 23 and 26 in those years, respectively.

Raonic’s best season was 2016 without a doubt, but he also had a great 2014 season just like Dimitrov. I remember him being incredibly consistent throughout most of the big events (he made QF or better in 7 of the 9 Masters and 2 of the 4 Slams). So he was 23 and 25 in those years (he’s about six months older than Dimitrov).

Nishikori’s best season was probably 2014 when he made his sole Slam final, but he was (until quite recently) a very consistent player who gathered nice, solid results in the following years as well: 2015, 2016, and 2018. That’d put him at ages 24, 25, 26, and 28.

Thiem peaked a lot later than the rest of his group but he’s also on the younger side of the Lost Gen. His best season was definitely 2020, but he had good 2018 and 2019 seasons as well. Might even throw 2017 in there. In fact, let’s do that. So that’d be ages 24, 25, 26, and 27. He still has room to add more prime seasons to the tally, but odds are that his 2021 season won’t fit in among them.

I think it’s safe to say that we have a good prime estimate for all of these guys except maybe Thiem, and we’re seeing a common trend here. Their best seasons generally fall from age 23 to age 28 (with a lean towards the front end of the scale) which looks a bit later than previous generations but we’re still looking at a roughly similar prime period here, a period that Medvedev, Zverev, Berrettini, and (in less than a month) Tsitsipas all find themselves in. Their results seem to line up with that as well, only they generally hit good streaks of form even earlier than the Lost Gen (but that could be because they’re just better players overall). Shapovalov falls on the younger side of the Next Gen spectrum but in a year or so, he’ll be in that “prime age”. Sure, I suppose there are outliers like Wawrinka who didn’t hit his stride till he was in his late 20’s. But they’re just that: exceptions to the rule. Stan’s own peers generally started playing their best tennis in their early 20’s.

I just thought it was kind of interesting to bring this up because the next gen talk was all well and good in 2016-2018 when they really were very young. But I don’t think it makes sense now, at least not since 2019, because all of these players are at around the age at which the vast majority of players from all sorts of eras generally perform at their best. So do we think that same rule applies to them and that they are indeed at their peaks? That is, have they really reached their ceilings? Or do we think they’ll improve even more in the following years, living up to their “Next Gen” label? Or is it a bit of a mix, as I think? I doubt Medvedev and Zverev can continue to improve (Zverev could have done that back in 2019 but he actually regressed rather than progressed), but there’s just a little bit of potential left for the 22-(and soon to be 23)-year-old Tsitsipas and Shapovalov. What does TT make of this?
We've seen how Musetti in his very first RG appearance challenged Djokovic very convincingly for the first two sets. We've seen how Sebastian Korda impressed in his very first Wimbledon appearance, likewise. I think that is what top tier talent looks like. And while it is possible that they too will fade out before they ever rise, the point is someone like Zverev is about missing the bus now. We can hold out hope on Tsitsipas because, again, he was quite impressive in his first slam final. Some would argue so was Zverev but that was against Thiem and not Djokovic. It matters. It's possible that some or even all of the fancied NextGen guys will win a slam or two at some point but that also means they are going to have Cilic/Delpo like careers if that and Wawrinka like in the most optimistic scenario. The hypotheticals 20 slams each counted next to their name will remain just that - hypothetical.
 

mike danny

Bionic Poster
Honestly, yeah. At least in Med and Zed's case.

Tsitsipas not yet, but not sure how good he can really become. Still, he hasn't been too young this year and no excuses not to have better stamina at almost 23. So he needs to improve that pronto, as the last 3 sets of the FO final were embarrassing from him.
 

Jonas78

Legend
Why cycling is seeing a rapid breakthrough of extremely young talents is a whole other discussion. But it largely used to be they would only slowly figure out how to train properly, which is so much easier now with modern power data and training analytics. This also makes it easier to discover talent earlier and put them on a top notch PED program earlier. Lastly there's been a huge shift in PED programs in the last ~2 years in cycling which has really phased out the old guard of top dogs really quickly.

So in short none of these reasons apply to tennis.
Well people usually point out that tennis is "too physical" for younger players to break through, i remember always hearing the same arguments in cycling... until now. Nadal won FO at 19, again - Pogacar TDF at 21, Bolt ran at 9.58 22y old. I really dont see why a tennis player shouldnt break through at an early age anymore. What makes tennis so different from everything else, and so different than 15 years ago?
 

Jonas78

Legend
Pogacar was helped several times by a fantastic team at this years TDF, a team that includes older and more experienced riders who can help him at several stages. He is also on some of the best gas in the world! :sneaky:

Don't get me wrong he is a phenomenal athlete in an extremely tough sport, but he is not a good Point of comparison for the plight of a similar-aged player in an individual sport like tennis.
First of all, you dont get to me the main man on a good team without being one of the strongest cyclists. Second - he also won the first individual time trial.

Im not saying tennis and cycling is the same, but people are usually comparing it to the endurance sports when they are finding excuses for why young tennis players cant break through anymore.
 

Xavier G

Hall of Fame
Medvedev is 25, Zverev is 24.

Tsitsipas and Shapovalov are 22, so they have a little more time in hand perhaps and the same with Sinner, FAA, Khachanov, Musetti etc.

Maybe players are breaking through a bit later now and can stay around longer if they have the motivation and hunger to, and have luck with few injuries etc, but most great players in tennis history were already winning Slams by the ages of 21, 22 and some were younger.

If players aren't at their peaks, or approaching it, at 25, 24 and the like, when will they be? These touted players haven't been good enough in tennis terms, or developed mentally/physically enough, or emotionally strong enough, to depose the aging champions, yet. They are good players of course, but not good enough in Slam play over five sets so far.

Some of these players I've mentioned should be winning Slams in the next year or so if they're ever going to be big winners.
 

Omega_7000

Legend
A bunch of pathetic mugs...All young players post Djokodal for the past 12 years or so and don't tell me they were only stopped by Djokodal because they weren't.

The only reason they will win slams in the future is because Djokodal are tired of winning
 

junior74

Bionic Poster
It's incredible how little trouble they have made for the weakest Big3 ever since 2015 ->

Tennis has problems, as I see it. No aftergrowth.
 

Third Serve

Talk Tennis Guru
IMO, peak age is more 28-34 than 22-28. The great age shift has recently risen quite steeply.
What do you think would be the cause of it rapidly shifting six places in the span of only a few years? A gradual increase that happens over ten years or so? Maybe. But to jump from the Lost Gen who peaked at similar ages compared to past players to a prime age of 28-34 just like that? There would have had to be a major shift in training, medicine, and even the way the sport is played, and I don’t think that’s nearly enough time for them to take place. What do you think caused this phenomenon?
 

mike danny

Bionic Poster
What do you think would be the cause of it rapidly shifting six places in the span of only a few years? A gradual increase that happens over ten years or so? Maybe. But to jump from the Lost Gen who peaked at similar ages compared to past players to a prime age of 28-34 just like that? There would have had to be a major shift in training, medicine, and even the way the sport is played, and I don’t think that’s nearly enough time for them to take place. What do you think caused this phenomenon?
It can't be this because different playets became worse at those ages.
 
Some are, some aren't. Once they start winning slams people will start squawking "See?? I told you, they just needed some time to reach their peaks!!!" But here's the problem with that - when they start winning slams, it won't be because they somehow suddenly got better, it will be because the Big 3 (currently a Big 2, and very close to being a Big 1), will have continued to decline due to age and wear and tear. As a result, the overall level of the game will decline, although because they all do play at such a high level, it will be mostly imperceptible.
 

Third Serve

Talk Tennis Guru
It can't be this because different playets became worse at those ages.
Yup. The Big 3 maintained a high level into their 30’s not because they peaked then but because they were so good that even their declined versions are still perfectly fine players. However, Fed and it looks like Nadal have really started to enter the “falling off a cliff” phase while Novak is still in the “steadily declining” phase. Meanwhile, what of the other players of that generation?

Ferrer peaked later than pretty much everyone else in his generation (2012-2014), but even he fell off in 2016 at age 34 and never came back. And that’s the outlier.

Berdych peaked in 2010 at age 24 and his prime lasted till about 2013/2014. He was still consistent in 2015-2017, but he was pretty much useless against the top guys outside of a couple of matches. After 2017, he was a non-entity.

Tsonga’s best years were 2008-2014, roughly. In 2008 he was 23 years old and in 2014 he was 29. He never returned to that level since, despite being from the same generation as Nadal and Djokovic. Barely winning matches today and it sems

Delpo peaked in 2009 at age 21, but he also had good 2012/2013 seasons as well as a mini-resurgence in 2017-2018 at age 29-30. He’s probably an outlier because he was very unfortunate with injuries, but from what little we can make of his career, he followed an aging trend that roughly lines up with some of his peers. And he’s younger than both Nadal and Djokovic too.

Cilic is an odd one because he did indeed peak somewhat late. His prime lasted from about 2014-2018 (and probably not even the whole of 2018, just the AO) at ages 25-30. Now, he’s almost nowhere to be seen. He’s Delpo’s age.

So yeah, all players are different, but they follow a general pattern with regards to aging. You nearly always see drop offs at around 30/31, even today.

And then Fed’s generation (which includes Ferrer out of the above) is a whole nother landscape of players who peaked in their early 20’s and retired early, but in fairness that group was plagued by injuries.
 

Oceans II

Professional
What do you think would be the cause of it rapidly shifting six places in the span of only a few years? A gradual increase that happens over ten years or so? Maybe. But to jump from the Lost Gen who peaked at similar ages compared to past players to a prime age of 28-34 just like that? There would have had to be a major shift in training, medicine, and even the way the sport is played, and I don’t think that’s nearly enough time for them to take place. What do you think caused this phenomenon?
I have no idea what specifically but probably training methods, nutrition, medicine, sport analytics, all that, etc. What I do know is that technology, human knowledge and things in general have developed so rapidly that even a smartphone manufactured 5 years ago would almost be considered unusable. I also favour experienced match hardened/conditioned bodies over the course of a gruelling season. IMO, Nishikori peaked in 2018/19 (29yo), Dimitrov peaked in 2017 (26yo) and possibly later if not for injuries and likewise Raonic, so close enough. We have recently seen Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, Wawrinka, Cilic, Anderson, Isner, Bautista Agut, Monfils, you name it, play some of their best tennis/record their best results at 28-34 and likewise with athletes from other sports.
 

MadariKatu

Hall of Fame
I think a little data goes a long way. To me, simple Points Won % is a fairly reliable, quick and dirty way of approximating a player's level. I think it's especially useful for tracking improvement (or decline) from one year to the next, since a player's quality of competition isn't likely to dramatically change over two years. If a player wins 52% of their points one year, then jumps to, say, 53.5% the next, to me that's a strong signal of improvement.

And actually, we don't need to use a hypothetical; we've seen a similar leap from Tsitsipas this season:

2019: 51.7%
2020: 52.8%
2021: 54.2%

Medvedev
hasn't demonstrated the same kind of leap this year, but that's because he already made a leap in 2019 and has improved incrementally since then:

2019: 53.2%
2020: 53.7%
2021: 53.9%

For comparison, the Big 3 were consistently winning > 55% of their points during their primes (and still are, at the slams). Can any of the NextGen players reach that bar in the coming years? Do they have to in order to assuage fan skepticism about their slam worthiness?

Let's wait and see what they do. I'm not fully convinced Tsitsipas is a 54% points won player at this stage -- because 54% is actually really high. Think typical Andy Murray prime season. But if my intuition is right, I would expect regression this season rather than in some subsequent season. Either way, if he's winning Roland Garros a few years from now, but it turns out that he's more of a ~53% player (like Thiem on clay), then it would be hard to say he's improved. It would suggest he wouldn't likely have been capable of beating an in-form Nadal or Djokovic.

As tennis fans, we should hope for a couple young 55% players to emerge :)

---

Source: Ultimate Tennis Statistics
Do you have the numbers for Shapovalov? For some reason it feels like he's been improving lately, and not only because he made the semis.
 

daggerman

Hall of Fame
I think a little data goes a long way. To me, simple Points Won % is a fairly reliable, quick and dirty way of approximating a player's level. I think it's especially useful for tracking improvement (or decline) from one year to the next, since a player's quality of competition isn't likely to dramatically change over two years. If a player wins 52% of their points one year, then jumps to, say, 53.5% the next, to me that's a strong signal of improvement.

And actually, we don't need to use a hypothetical; we've seen a similar leap from Tsitsipas this season:

2019: 51.7%
2020: 52.8%
2021: 54.2%

Medvedev
hasn't demonstrated the same kind of leap this year, but that's because he already made a leap in 2019 and has improved incrementally since then:

2019: 53.2%
2020: 53.7%
2021: 53.9%

For comparison, the Big 3 were consistently winning > 55% of their points during their primes (and still are, at the slams). Can any of the NextGen players reach that bar in the coming years? Do they have to in order to assuage fan skepticism about their slam worthiness?

Let's wait and see what they do. I'm not fully convinced Tsitsipas is a 54% points won player at this stage -- because 54% is actually really high. Think typical Andy Murray prime season. But if my intuition is right, I would expect regression this season rather than in some subsequent season. Either way, if he's winning Roland Garros a few years from now, but it turns out that he's more of a ~53% player (like Thiem on clay), then it would be hard to say he's improved. It would suggest he wouldn't likely have been capable of beating an in-form Nadal or Djokovic.

As tennis fans, we should hope for a couple young 55% players to emerge :)

---
Source: Ultimate Tennis Statistics

Here are the Points Won % stats from 2019-21 for other NextGen players in the top-20 (plus Felix, who's younger than 22, but I included him since he played a full season in 2019, unlike Sinner).

Name: 2019 -> 2020 -> 2021
Berrettini: 51.4% -> 52.7% -> 53.9%
Zverev: 52.8% (2018) -> 51.5% -> 52.5% -> 52.3%
Rublev: 51.8% -> 53.9% -> 53.7%
Shapovalov: 50.9% -> 50.8% -> 51.5%
Hurkacz: 50.4% -> 50.1% -> 51.0%
Auger-Aliassime: 50.5% -> 50.7% -> 52.5%
Ruud: 50.7% -> 51.4% -> 54.0%
De Minaur: 52.0% -> 50.5% -> 52.2%

I won't go into a lot of detail, but I'll just point out a couple things. Zverev is an outlier inasmuch as his highest PW% in a season came outside of the 2019-21 band. It's not surprising that he posted his highest mark in 2018, nor is it surprising that he noticeably regressed the following year when his second serve problems surfaced. I also want to highlight Ruud, who's seemingly taken a massive leap this season. I think he is much improved, but I don't expect the 54% win rate to hold up through the hardcourt season.

Overall, though, you can see that most of the top young players are making marked progress. I've noticed it when I watch them play, but it's fair to ask how much more improvement they will make in the next two or three years.

Do you have the numbers for Shapovalov? For some reason it feels like he's been improving lately, and not only because he made the semis.

Numbers for Shapovalov included above. The numbers signal some improvement, but not a leap. I should definitely note that UTS' PW% stats don't yet include 2021 Wimbledon (or 2021 RG for that matter, which doesn't affect Shapo but does affect everybody else). However, I was curious about how Shapo's Wimbledon performance would affect his overall figure, so I looked it up from a different source. Shapovalov won 53% of his points at Wimbledon, and with those points included, his overall win rate so far this season is actually 51.8%.

But putting the numbers aside, I agree with you that it feels like Shapo is improving when watching him. He's still pretty erratic at times, but his point construction is making progress for sure.

---
Source: Ultimate Tennis Statistics, Google
 

travlerajm

Talk Tennis Guru
Players almost always reach their prime between 22 and 25. NextGen is a weak generation but i still have some hope for Shapovalov. The generation after NextGen looks even worse to me, so it seems like a lasting problem. Its also BS that players cant win slams at a young age anymore. Tadej Pogacar just won Tour De France two times in a row at 21 and 22, and Big3 won their first slam at 19,20 and 22.

Tennis is probably not attracting enough talents anymore, which i think also the absence of US players confirms. There is probably also something wrong with the coaching. The older players careers are inflated, and when they finally retire it will be a wide open field.
I think it’s less about not attractive talents and more about failed evolution in tennis training techniques.

The average level of pro tennis has been in decline for the past decade.
 

daggerman

Hall of Fame
I think it’s less about not attractive talents and more about failed evolution in tennis training techniques.

The average level of pro tennis has been in decline for the past decade.

But why would stagnant training techniques lead to a lower average level? Wouldn't the average level remain at a constant?
 

travlerajm

Talk Tennis Guru
But why would stagnant training techniques lead to a lower average level? Wouldn't the average level remain at a constant?
Not stagnant training techniques. Worse training techniques.

The Djokodal gen was the last gen that grew up hitting through the ball before poly era.
 

daggerman

Hall of Fame
Not stagnant training techniques. Worse training techniques.

Got it. I wasn't sure what you meant by "failed evolution."

I don't agree -- I think the average level is higher than ever -- but I respect your opinion. I do believe that tennis training would benefit from more innovation.
 

daphne

Hall of Fame
I wondered when someone was going to try and ruin a very good thread with this line.

No surprise it was you who did so. :rolleyes:
I was wondering when our local whinger will appear. And guess what you are more precise than Rolex or any other Swiss watch!
 

Jonas78

Legend
I think it’s less about not attractive talents and more about failed evolution in tennis training techniques.

The average level of pro tennis has been in decline for the past decade.
That could be. Considering the height of the NextGen and BabyGen, i have a feeling its too easy living on your serve and powerful forehand as a junior. You dont develop other parts of the game and get exposed when you face the top players.
 

Poisoned Slice

Bionic Poster
I haven't even begun to peak. My next one is going to rock the billboard charts.
mignight.jpg
 

travlerajm

Talk Tennis Guru
That could be. Considering the height of the NextGen and BabyGen, i have a feeling its too easy living on your serve and powerful forehand as a junior. You dont develop other parts of the game and get exposed when you face the top players.
I think the ‘modern’ forehand technique is partly to blame. No one can return serve anymore.

The uppercut wristy forehand yields good results in the juniors, where the ability to punish short sitters pays off.

But in the pros, the wristy fh and lack of ability to play the net become major weaknesses.
 

RelentlessAttack

Hall of Fame
Thread is correct that many of these guys are at or near their best and aren’t going to get significantly better.

Hopefully Stef can improve his return but I doubt it. Hard (impossible) to improve reaction time and fast twitch

Hopefully Zverev can put himself together mentally (doubtful)
 
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