Olympic champion Marc Rosset has warned that there is a “terrible void” behind Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner and said his ATP rivals must find a solution quickly to challenge them.
Alcaraz won his fourth Grand Slam title this weekend, beating Novak Djokovic in straight sets to successfully defend his Wimbledon title. It was the Spaniard’s second consecutive title at SW19, but also his back-to-back major victories after his victory at Roland Garros last month.
Alcaraz is currently ranked third in the world but has already spent 36 weeks in his career as world number one, a ranking currently held by Sinner. The Italian has held the No. 1 spot since the end of the French Open, won his first major title at the Australian Open and has only lost four matches in 2024.
At 22, he and Alcaraz, who turned 21 in May, are confident going into the ATP Finals looking to become the next best player on the tour. With Djokovic, 37, and Rafael Nadal, 38, likely to retire at the end of this season, the ATP could become more open than it was under the Big Three.
But Rosset, a former world number 9 and Grand Slam semi-finalist, believes there’s little talent behind Alcaraz and Sinner and that the pair “maybe have a shot at the big time.” Speaking to L’Equipe, he said: “For him (Alcaraz) to reach 30 Grand Slam titles would mean nine or 10 years without injuries, without the emergence of a very big rival and almost three titles per season.”
“Then I realised that behind Sinner there were some very typical players and there was a terrible void. “Today, Alcaraz is the only one who does so much. I tell myself that with him and Sinner, there could be a boulevard in front of us.
“If others don’t immediately ask themselves the right questions about what they need to add to their game, we shouldn’t say, ‘We were unlucky, we failed at the same time as them.'”
Attention will be focused on who could compete with Alcaraz and Sinner in the coming seasons. An obvious candidate is Holger Rune, who at 21 years old will likely have the best years of his career over the next decade.
However, the Dane has fallen significantly behind his two contemporaries in recent years, falling to 17th in the world after finishing a career-best fourth and still missing the semi-finals of a Grand Slam tournament. Others, Alexander Zverev, Kasper Ruud and Stefanos Tsitsipas, have made multiple Grand Slam finals but have never won and are not in a permanent position to do so.
In fact, only two men born in the 1990s have won a Grand Slam singles title: now-retired Dominic Thiem and currently world No. 5 Daniil Medvedev.
