Much has been made over the past couple of seasons of the need for young, fresh faces to assume the mantle of challengers to the likes of Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. As hardly bears repeating, the pair have swept the last nine grand slam titles between them, playing each other in three out of four finals in 2025, and almost all of the other tournaments of note too. Seemingly every mention of either name is accompanied by another history-making feat.
But those new challengers don’t seem to be emerging, leaving the pair’s grip on tennis tighter than ever. At the moment that is held down single-handedly by Sinner, with Alcaraz out of action for the entire remainder of the clay season and the grass-court swing with a troubling wrist injury.
So with the likes of Jack Draper and Holger Rune also missing in action, this French Open could give rise to a very different story, an unexpected extra horse in the race. Because Novak Djokovic is still around, still hungry, and still dangerous.
The Serb is 38 and having extended his physical prime deep into his 30s, is now beginning to crack at the seams. Even the sport’s most dogged competitor can only hold off Father Time for so long. He was hampered physically in his only clay-court match so far this year, a three-set loss to talented qualifier Dino Prizmic in Rome. Certainly it is less than ideal preparation for the rigours of five-set tennis.
But regardless of his physical condition throughout the rest of the season, Djokovic raises his game for the grand slams, finding previously-hidden reserves from somewhere, and forces himself to be competitive. His record this season is uninspiring, but he is never one to write off.
Go back to this time last year, and his clay swing was dire, with straight-set opening-round exits to relatively unfancied competition in both Monte Carlo and Madrid. But he followed that up with a title-winning run at the ATP 250 in Geneva, and then reached the semi-finals at Roland Garros.
And the brutal reality is he will never get a better chance. This summer’s majors will see any competitor only having to defeat one of Alcaraz or Sinner, at most. In Melbourne, Djokovic put in a herculean effort to see off the Italian in a five-set semi-final, leaving him spent before facing Alcaraz in the final.
That will not be an issue here. The 24-time grand slam champion is still dreaming of a 25th, and the odds just got a little bit better.
They have likewise improved for the rest of the ATP Tour, but this is a test that the entire field have comprehensively failed at every previous time of asking. The psychological stranglehold that Djokovic, and to some extent Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, used to exert over opponents has now transferred to Sinner and Alcaraz.
Jokes of ‘you almost had him’, most recently made by Taylor Fritz to Casper Ruud after the Norwegian experienced a Sinner shellacking in Rome, while funny, feel indicative of a wider malaise among the players. These are highly successful, talented, driven athletes, who nonetheless are possessed by a weary resignation whenever they take on Sinner or Alcaraz – exemplified by Alexander Zverev, still Sinner’s most likely opponent in the Roland Garros final, who has lost their last nine meetings on the trot, the last six in straight sets. The match is over long before they even take to the court.
There are younger players trying to buck that trend: the likes of French hopeful Arthur Fils, owner of one of the most destructive forehands on the tour, Spanish teenager Rafael Jodar, and Brazil’s Joao Fonseca, who ran Sinner (reasonably) close in Indian Wells, losing in two tight tie-breaks. These youngsters have not had the experience of the forlorn 90s generation, of watching Sinner and Alcaraz rapidly accelerate in their rearview mirror and blast past them into sporting immortality.
But expecting any of the ATP’s teenage cohort to dismantle the most complete player in this era of tennis, on a surface – previously his weakest – on which he has dominated all season, feels unlikely. If anything is going to defeat Sinner it will probably be his own body, after he struggled in difficult conditions in his Rome semi-final against Daniil Medvedev. Or alternatively, an old sweat, the grandmaster taking on the apprentice who has now surpassed him.
The women’s draw stands in sharp relief. While the likes of Djokovic will be relieved that Alcaraz’s withdrawal has halved the battle, Elina Svitolina fought her way past three of the world’s top four players on her way to winning the Rome title. The 31-year-old is now playing the best tennis of her entire career, having added new facets to her game and propelled by greater belief – proving to the men’s tour that you can still reinvent yourself and your game after an excellent, but not stratospheric, career.
After several seasons lacking a focal point following Serena Williams’ retirement, the WTA Tour is now the strongest it has been in decades. The two WTA 1000 tournaments on the red dirt were won by Ukrainians – a resurgent Svitolina and Marta Kostyuk, one of the tour’s best athletes, who kept the mental wobbles, which have sometimes hampered her on the biggest stage, at bay to win her biggest title yet.
All of defending champion Coco Gauff, four-time champion Iga Swiatek, world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka and the in-form Elena Rybakina are capable of a winning run in Paris too.
Of course the clay can throw up surprises, exemplified by last year’s fairytale semi-finalist Lois Boisson. Both tours have a raft of talent, young or re-discovered, capable of springing an upset. And perhaps the resurgence of Svitolina points to a wider sense of possibility for the old guard, a feeling that this French Open is theirs for the taking – or at the very least, that there will never be a better time to try. Enter Djokovic, for one last roll of the dice.
