What were you doing in the summer of 2009? Appraising Bradley Cooper’s comedic chops in The Hangover? Wondering if Obama could really get it together to pass a health-care bill? Collecting unemployment thanks to that pesky global recession? Look, the point is it was a long time ago. And that summer was also the last time a male American tennis player made it to a major championship final, when Andy Roddick lost in excruciating fashion to Roger Federer at Wimbledon. Since then, American women have made it to 29 finals and won 15 of them, 12 courtesy of Serena Williams. American men have largely been impotent at the big tournaments during that span. It’s been a far cry from the Pete Sampras– and Andre Agassi–dominated ’90s — or really from the rest of tennis history, which is replete with star-spangled men’s greats from Bill Tilden to Jimmy Connors.
This once-unimaginable losing streak will finally end on Sunday, when either Taylor Fritz or Frances Tiafoe enter Arthur Ashe Stadium with an opportunity to win one of the more topsy-turvy major tournaments in recent memory; the two go toe to toe in the semifinals on Friday for a spot in the final. On Tuesday, Fritz, who has been playing the tennis of his life, dispatched Germany’s morally dubious Alexander Zverev in a steely four-set quarterfinals performance. Later, Frances Tiafoe, who has rebounded in earnest at the Open after rough spring and summer, took out Grigor Dimitrov in a somewhat less steely performance — but a W’s a W.
Fritz and Tiafoe, both 26, have been on tennis fans’ radar for a long time — this magazine published a dual profile of them way back in 2016, when they had just gone pro. That they merited such attention at such an embryonic stage speaks to the drought in American men’s tennis that had already reached crisis proportions eight years ago. Since then, Fritz and Tiafoe have both established themselves as very good tour players, solidly ensconcing themselves in the second tier of men’s tennis. Neither, though, had looked particularly close to winning a major until now, though Tiafoe did make an epic run to the semis here in 2022, beating Rafael Nadal along the way. If any young American seemed capable of such a feat — and there are a lot of them in the top 100 now — it was 21-year-old Ben Shelton, whose sheer talent gives him the opportunity to compete with the troika at the top of the game: Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, and Jannik Sinner. But Tiafoe defeated an undisciplined Shelton in the third round on Friday. Tiafoe was expecting to take on Djokovic, the greatest player ever to pick up a racket, in the fourth round. Then, Djokovic suffered a shock loss at the hands of Australian Alexei Popyrin, in what he called “one of the worst tennis matches I’ve ever played.”
Djokovic, at 37, is finally slowing down, and appears to have saved all his energy this year for a spectacular gold-medal victory at the Olympics against Alcaraz. His early exit at the Open speaks to an inconvenient fact: Fritz and Tiafoe will have made it to the finals not because they have triumphed over Djokovic (Fritz is 0-9 lifetime against Djokovic, Tiafoe 0-2), but because they got a little lucky in avoiding a match with him or his ultra-elite ilk, which hadn’t really been on the table until recently. Tiafoe has been straightforward about this reality. “It’s not like it once was where you make the quarterfinal and play Rafa and you’re looking at flights,” he said on Tuesday. “Now it’s totally different. No one’s unbeatable. Especially later in the season, guys are maybe a little bit cooked, just not as fresh, they’re vulnerable.”
Does this dim the magnitude of the Americans’ achievement? Not really. The last two decades have just been unprecedentedly tough for the kind of very good but not best-ever player who used to win the occasional major tournament. The last American man to do so was Roddick, here in New York, 21 years ago. He was supposed to be the next in line for American greatness, the inheritor of the Sampras throne. And he did have a phenomenal career, but also happened to run into the immovable force that was Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. At that point, something strange happened: Three players — Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic — almost completely took over the game. Their reign produced superhuman late-round match after superhuman late-round match against one another, and an astounding trophy haul for all three (24 for Djokovic, 22 for Nadal, 20 for Federer). But it also robbed the men’s game of precious variety and unpredictability. For two decades, one of those three guys showed up in just about every major final, to the point where it felt like they were playing on a separate tour from everyone else. Between 2004 and 2023, they won an astounding 65 of 79 majors. Only 12 different men won a major during that period; between 1984 and 2003, it had been 28.
Federer retired in 2022; Nadal is on the verge, after having struggled for two injury-plagued seasons; and Djokovic may soon follow suit as well. This year, for the first time since 2002, the Big Three will win zero majors. And maybe that heralds a return to the old days of historically great players who don’t have to win absolutely everything. Alcaraz has already won four majors, but has also, so far, proven to be less lethally consistent than his predecessors (though he’s only 21, and this could change). And if Sinner makes the Open finals, as seems likely after his Wednesday-night win over Daniil Medvedev, he will be the heavy favorite against either Fritz or Tiafoe. But that match wouldn’t quite feel like the foregone conclusion it would have been if peak Federer, Nadal, or Djokovic were in his place.
So here’s to Tiafoe, Fritz, and American men’s relevancy. And also, maybe, for a tennis future that’s a little less preordained.
