Tennis in 2026 is a reminder of what Williams, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic made the sport forget

The dominant players that came before the current stars of tennis made the extraordinary appear routine. It's not so easy. Aryna Sabalenka, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are dominating tennis — with all their flaws on show. Marcin Cholewinski / Cal Sport via Share article 1 Aryna Sabalenka, the wonen’s world No. 1 and two-time defending U.S. Open champion, was at a roundtable with a handful of journalists last week when someone asked her about the glut of power at the top of the women’s game, mentioning Sabalenka, Coco Gauff and Iga Świątek.

Sabalenka cut them off right there, and reminded them that they had forgotten Elena Rybakina, the world No. 2, and in her view, maybe the best player in the world this season. Sabalenka, 28, who has been the dominant player on the WTA the past two years, recognized that she is in the middle of her most mortal stretch of form in that time.

Since winning the Sunshine Double of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells and the Miami Open, she has made one semifinal in seven tournaments. But just as Rybakina seemed poised to overtake Sabalenka at the top of the world rankings, the Australian Open champion aggravated an Achilles injury and retired against Świątek in the Cincinnati Open quarterfinals. Whether she plays the U.S. Open, her best chance to get past Sabalenka, remains in flux.

Carlos Alcaraz, Sinner’s great rival at the top of the sport, hadn’t even made it to Paris to defend his title. He had already missed more than a month with a right wrist injury by then, and he will return at the U.S. Open having missed three more. The crucible of five-set tennis, and the shaking off of plenty of rust, await as he tries to defend his singles title.

I don’t know how it’s going to be, the matches, if I’m going to win matches, if I’m going to lose in the first rounds, if the matches are going to be super-demanding physically or not. “So I don’t know how it’s going to be, but what I can tell right now is I will hear my body much better this year than last year.”

Following losses at the Canadian and Cincinnati Opens, Sabalenka will play the mixed doubles with Novak Djokovic, then aim to regain confidence in time for the singles. At this point, the hope is that her affinity for New York and the U.S. Open, which she has won the past two years, will help her rediscover the prowess that made her nearly invincible earlier in the season and at times last year.

This isn’t the script anyone had written for this trio early in the year. That’s likely far more the fault of the would-be tennis script writers than Alcaraz, Sinner and Sabalenka. Those three have combined for 16 Grand Slam titles and five year-end No. 1 finishes since 2022. Alcaraz and Sinner have reconfigured the men’s game into a hyper-aggressive game of chicken, in which being at neutral in a rally is basically losing the point.

It’s a level of success that had plenty of tennis observers believing that history was about to repeat itself. For 20 years, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Serena Williams lulled the tennis faithful into thinking that dominance on a historic level was normal. Those four combined for 89 Grand Slam singles titles. Djokovic may yet make it an even 90.

What’s happening now — Sinner and Alcaraz having to manage injuries and sometimes missing Grand Slams, and Sabalenka, Świątek and Gauff going for long stretches without titles and having to reconfigure their tennis along the way, is much more like it.

Alcaraz has made it clear what his career goal is. He wants to be the greatest player in the sport’s history. Sabalenka, who is already 28 and has won “just” four Grand slam titles, has already had a Hall of Fame career. ‘Best ever’ is a dream she likely let go of long ago, if she ever even had it.