Men’s tennis and the real-world consequences of its Big Three era
Can a thing feel entirely impossible and entirely inevitable all at once? This, perhaps, was the paradox of the most recent Greatest Comeback In The History Of Tennis: once it began you could already glimpse how it ended. We’ve all been doing this for 15 years. The muscle memory is too strong, the emotional liturgy too deeply ingrained. This is why, from the moment Rafael Nadal started to claw back his Australian Open final against Daniil Medvedev from two sets down, it never really crossed my mind that he would lose.
