ATP Finals Minus The Big Three As The Next Gen Take Center Stage

This week, Novak Djokovic confirmed that he won’t be attending the ATP Finals starting on Sunday in Turin. The seven-time winner said he was pulling out of the season finale because of injury in a rather dispassionate statement on social media. What type of injury wasn’t specified. The 37-year-old has bigger trophies on his mind for 2025.

It is the first time since 2001 that one of Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer will not be playing at the ATP endgame. The Big Three no longer call the shots. Or hit them. The Next Gen are taking it from here. Or will they?

It’s been a trophyless season for Djokovic, barring that memorable gold medal at the Paris Olympics. There’s a new front three on the tennis grid after Alexander Zverev jumped above Carlos Alcaraz by winning the Paris Masters. The world No. 2 is not the Next Best Thing anymore at the age of 27 and has never claimed a major. Zverev has gone up the charts without raising too many pulse rates.

Can the German relight the fire of his maiden ATP Finals win in 2018 when Djokovic predicted he would be a big contender in every Slam? Grigor Dimitrov and Stefanos Tsitsipas, winners in 2017 and 2019, never really kicked on.

Tennis is playing around with rules, seeking new audiences and bringing the rock and roll to the game in ways not previously seen as the Big Three are replaced by the Next Gen. To sustain the momentum, the game seeks match-ups that can replicate the noise and the intensity of previous generations. It's only natural that this all takes time, a commodity that audiences don't always have.

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At face value, there aren’t that many head-to-heads to salivate over as the final eight in Turin were announced. Casper Ruud, Alex de Minaur and Andrey Rublev have all qualified but don’t bring a huge level of expectation to make a breakthrough in Italy. Rublev’s temper tantrums are certainly more of a talking point than his tennis right now.

Sinner, Zverev, Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev and Taylor Fritz are the five that are framed as the live contenders. Medvedev is one of life’s mavericks and is not the fist-clenching type that crowds tend to rally around. Witness his relationship and eccentric behavior with Flushing Meadows.

Fritz was dismantled by Sinner in a flat U.S. Open final, although he has beaten Zverev twice recently at Wimbledon and New York. The Fritz and Zverev rivalry briefly went beyond the sports pages this summer because of the social media influence of the American's girlfriend Morgan Riddle. The two are drawn in different groups in Torino though.

If the Sinner and Alcaraz show is the final act of the year, then the signs of a more sparky drama would be welcome. Alcaraz leads the Italian 3-0 in victories this year, including a French Open semi-final win that didn’t bring the best out of either. The best match of the trio was in the China Open which the Spaniard claimed in the third set tie-break. The duo travelled to Shanghai together immediately afterwards which was an eye-opener for those who believe that the vanquished would rather be in a darkened room than sitting near their nemesis after such a reverse.

Alcaraz moved quickly on this, putting it into context: “We have a good relationship, but we are not close friends, you know, but I think the respect that we have, you know, put us in a position that we have a really good relationship. At the end I got the win and then, two hours later, we are in the same plane having some laughs, making jokes, talking about life, acting like nothing happened before.”

Despite the mutual respect between Djokovic, Nadal and Federer, there was always a real air of distance and rivalry in the big matches when they crossed the white line. In the 70s and 80s, Jimmy Connors recently told Men's Journal about what fueled his battles with John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl and Bjorn Borg. "Everybody knew there was tension between us, on court and off. That's what's really ingrained in my mind: This is real. This isn't a soft rivalry. There were no hugs and kisses. To this day, with Mac, as friendly as we are, there's always gonna be tension there. "

This year's tournament will award over $15 million in prize money, with the singles champion earning a potential $4.8 million if they go unbeaten. It is the biggest prize on the men's tour but the incentive is to leave 2024 wanting more silverware. The ATP Finals is still a mega event but is in danger of feeling like a B-movie at the end of a long season.

Rafa Nadal's farewell in the Davis Cup Finals will strip away another plank of the old school alumni. Sinner and Alcaraz have graduated from the academy of hard knocks. 2025 needs some more of where they came from.