What will men’s tennis look like when Roger Federer retires? It’s a question asked regularly, with Federer having come to exemplify the sport over the last dozen years for not only the hardcore fan, but the casual, second-Sunday-at-the-Slams observer. For many who have enjoyed this great era of the game, it’s a future not only to wonder about, but to worry about. Who will fill the seats and move the needle; who will challenge today’s stars and record books; who will hit the tweener and wear the cardigan?
Over the past two years, the answer has slowly been revealing itself to us. While Federer’s status among the sport’s elite remains unquestioned—in 2014, the 33-year-old won the most matches on the ATP tour—his play at the Slams has steadily slipped. He’s failed to reach the quarterfinals in five of his last seven Grand Slam tournaments, and he’s won just one of the last twenty majors. But in the process, he’s given a number of other players the opportunity to show what they can do on the sport’s biggest stages.
On the seventh day of the Australian Open, he rested—not by choice, of course—and it was Andreas Seppi who got to face Nick Kyrgios, with the winner meeting the survivor of the Andy Murray-Grigor Dimitrov showcase showdown. All four men acquitted themselves admirably in a preview of what the post-Federer (and for that matter, post-Rafael Nadal) landscape could look like. And I didn’t want to turn away.