The Big 3 Domination of Grand Slams

Novak Djokovic has won the Australian Open for his 22nd Grand Slam title.

Since Roger Federer won his first Grand Slam in 2003 the Big 3 have dominated the sport. In the Australian, French, and Wimbledon they have won 52 winners of the 58 slams in those three majors. Only the US Open has had any minor diversity with 8 of the non Big 3 winners coming in the 20 times it was played. That’s a total of 64 out of the last 78 majors have been won by the Big 3 and they were in 7 of the finals they lost as well.

There was a stretch in their prime of 61 majors where they won 53. Of those 8 majors, they lost Stan Wawrinka and Andy Murray (who are all time greats in any other era) and hall of farmers themselves won 6 of them. I still consider Murray to be an all-time great considering the number of times he lost in the semi-finals and finals to the Big 3. The rest of his resume is more similar to Pete Sampras than other 3 time winners. He just had the unfortunate luck of being starved off by the Big 3.

What is remarkable about this run no one even talks about is how many times the Big 3 have missed slams with injury or other issues. They weren’t even going into many of these tournaments with all the bullets in the chamber. While health and absences are part of it, with a little more health or without covid and the vaccine status issues they likely have a few more as well.

Absences

11 Nadal

8 Federer

3 Djokovic

That’s also not including 3 withdraws during the majors and even 1 disqualification for hitting a line person as. That’s 26 times health or other issues forced at least one of them out of a major.

It’s just an incredible run that continues for the foreseeable future now. As good as the next generation rising looks they aren’t ready to take out the greatest player that ever lived yet. Nadal isn’t done yet either as the Big 3 legacy marches on.