Part 3: I ranked every* Big Three Grand Slam tennis match because it beats thinking about my own mortality
*Federer vs. Nadal, Nadal vs. Djokovic, Djokovic vs. Federer
Part one: No. 48-26 | Part two: No. 25-11 | Part three: No. 10-1
In the end, it’s really more about the friends we made along the way, innit? For the last few weeks, as the late-afternoon shadows have lengthened, I’ve gone on a journey through the recent-ish past in order to add some desperately-needed perspective to what is already one of the most-chronicled sports things in the history of sports things: the Big Three era of men’s tennis.
While pondering two of my favorite topics — tennis and mortality — I made the astounding discovery that there was no existing ranking of every Big Three match at a Grand Slam, at least not anywhere search-optimized. By this, I mean the 48 matches in which two of them — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic — played against each other between 2005 and 2022 at a major tournament. Federer retired in 2022, and Nadal announced he will say farewell at the Davis Cup in November, meaning there will never be another Big Three match at the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon or the U.S. Open.
So instead of feeling the sun on my face, working on myself, reading a good book, connecting with my family, etc., I have been replaying old tennis matches on Youtube! I created a flimsy system (explained here) by which to rank them against each other, via a 1-to-5 point assessment in seven categories — reputation, stakes, historical/GOAT implications, drama/suspense, length by sets, quality of play, memorable individual moments. You may notice that among the upper echelon of Big Three slam matches, the numerical ratings I’ve assigned are all pretty close, so in the end it’s mostly just vibes anyway.
This was split into three installments, counting backward from 48, the first two of which are linked at the top. And now the end is near, and so we face the final curtain have arrived at the top 10. Let’s beat this dead horse one last time.
10. 2011 French Open SF: Federer d. Djokovic (7-6, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6)
Roger secures entry to his last Roland Garros final with a display of wizardry amidst what was already perceived as a decline. He hadn’t been to a major final in more than a year (unthinkable at that point) and seemed to be acquiescing mentally to the dual challenges of his two younger rivals, despite still leading Novak in their head-to-head. Djokovic, on a 41-0 winning streak in 2011, was reaching for history: A victory would secure the No. 1 ranking and tie John McEnroe’s record of 42 consecutive match wins.
However Roger summoned the confidence for this performance (regarded widely as his best-ever match on clay), he turned a soggy court in Paris into a…pick your metaphor here. Let’s go with ballet stage. When people talk about the elegance of his movement, this match is what they mean. I realize that when Federer’s tennis is described in artistic terms, it short-sells the also-extraordinary strength and speed and force of his game. But clay seems to amplify all of it. Yes, you see him gliding and dancing and basically floating around the court, but the surface’s reduced speed also underscores the animal physicality required for what he accomplished here.
This match (incidentally, the highest-ranked four-setter on my list) is how I got assimilated into the Federer cult in the first place. I watched the final moments with some tennis nuts gathered around a small TV in the newsroom where I worked at the time. I hadn’t been following tennis all that closely, but it took about five seconds for me to get sucked in. There was the compelling storyline of the aging champ (all of 29) against the ropes, the ingenuity of his shotmaking, that last serve up the T, that victory finger-wag, that sliding backhand pass at 30-0 in S3G7 that makes every Fed highlight reel — all of it woke me up to the genius of a game that I’d long simply for granted but was, in fact, as vulnerable to the crawl of time as any of us are, except for the increasingly fleeting moments when it seemed invincible.
Rating: 33
5 (reputation), 5 (stakes), 5 (GOAT/history), 5 (drama), 4 (length), 4 (quality), 5 (moments)
9. 2019 Wimbledon F: Djokovic d. Federer (7-6, 1-6, 7-6, 4-6, 13-12)
So I have this idea for a multiverse-type sci-fi story in which reality starts to fracture. What happens in that fractured reality, I have no idea, but how it manifests is, a guy obsessively watches tennis videos on Youtube, including matches with well-known outcomes and famous climactic moments. Like, say, a historic Wimbledon final in which his hero, an aging but resurgent Federer, is a single point away, twice, from what would have been his greatest accomplishment, defeating both Nadal and Djokovic, something he’d never done in the same major, en route to a career-capping Slam title. The extent to which he choked on those two points or was legitimately outplayed remains forever unresolved, but in any case, it doesn’t happen, and Djokovic wins the points, the game and the match (familiar story by now). That’s the real timeline, obviously.
So the guy, who for whatever psychological reason habitually rewatches matches, once again cues up this famous final to, I don’t know, be reminded of life’s ultimate futility(?). Only this time, Federer actually wins. He doesn’t rush the net on a weak approach shot, giving Djokovic space for an improbable, if not miraculous, backhand crosscourt pass. He stays back longer, waits for a short ball, approaches on a deeper shot, puts away the volley and collapses to his knees in triumph.
The viewer is dumbfounded, of course, because that is not what happened. He quickly looks elsewhere online to make sure he didn’t hallucinate, and sure enough, Federer won the match. He barely has time to unpack the personal existential ramifications of this match result (significant!) before he starts to ascertain everything else that’s askew about the timeline, kind of like Marty McFly exploring Hill Valley in the alternate 1985 from “Back to the Future Part II.” Will it be a “Biff’s Pleasure Paradise” kind of parallel universe or a hotdog-fingers kind of parallel universe? Dunno, this is as far as I’ve gotten, but in my fictionalized new reality, Rog pulled it off.
Anyway, back in our own world, despite its epic length and aura of history and GOAT-race implications, I rate Wimbledon 2019 somewhat below the highest tier of Big Three matches, because, honestly, the tennis was nowhere near either guy’s best.
Rating: 33
5 (rep), 5 (stakes), 5 (hist), 5 (drama), 5 (length), 3 (qual), 5 (moments)
8. 2014 Wimbledon F: Djokovic d. Federer (6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 5-7, 6-4)
Here, actually, is the best of the trio of Djokovic-Federer 2010s Wimbledon finals. It’s maybe a bit less cinematic than 2019. But each neck-and-neck set was its own miniature duel, none better than the fourth, as Djokovic blinked when he was up 5-2 — and within a point of wrapping up the title — allowing Roger to go on a five-game rampage to force a decider. The fifth set was unbearably tense right to the end, when Fed dumped an overhead into the net during S5G9, setting Novak up for a decisive break at a point where it still could have gone either direction. Yet another addition to the Late Federer Heartbreak Hall of Fame.
Credit where it belongs, Novak’s win was a function of steely reserve and incremental gamesmanship. Roger’s serve was better and their ground games were equally attritional. The crucial stat is Djokovic’s 133 points won on return to Federer’s 108, a small-ish marginal advantage that ends up telling the whole story. What’s the life-and-death lesson here? Dunno, I guess what usually happens in tennis at this level is that one player is usually a tiny bit better when it matters, and in the 2010s that was almost always Djokovic.
Rating: 33
5 (rep), 4 (stakes), 4 (hist), 5 (drama), 5 (length), 4 (qual), 5 (moments)
7. 2011 U.S. Open SF: Djokovic d. Federer (6-7, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 7-5)
Ah, it’s the “Empire Strikes Back” of Novak’s 2010s match-point-down victories against Roger. Although Federer seems a bit more “empire”? A trilogy where the second installment is the best, is what I mean. The end of their 2011 USO semifinal — a rematch of the previous year’s semi at Flushing, where something eerily similar happened — has become notorious and, for those of us in the Fed camp, unbearable to even think about. There is a lot to unpack.
Roger was up 40-15 at 5-3 in the fifth, one good serve away from thwarting a tenacious comeback that would later become Djokovic’s brand. Federer served out wide, and Novak returned it with a forehand that almost seemed contemptuous, which landed in as a crosscourt winner with a ratio of calculation to chance that is still hotly debated. The reality is that Roger’s serve probably wasn’t good enough to even require the lucky “slap” that Federer fans have convinced themselves is what happened. He played it safe, and the best returner of all time simply hit one of the best returns of all time? Plausible.
Either way, an arena that was rabidly pro-Federer sat in stunned silence, unsure how to react. Djokovic extended both arms to his sides like a shit-eating Corcovado Jesus, in a gesture of triumph, confusion or antagonism (probably all three). Federer lost his service game, then the next three games, then the match, then whatever psychological advantage he might have maintained in their rivalry thereafter.
The Shot may or may not have altered the course of tennis history — after all, a Federer win would have extended the Roger-Rafa duopoly for at least a little longer and possibly robbed Djokovic of the confidence he would need to mount his subsequent decade-long tear through the sport’s record books. Even though Federer would notch one more big win against Djokovic at a major (en route to his Wimbledon title the following season), something undoubtedly changed. Arguably, this is the moment Federer got “washed,” long before that term came into general use. It’s the point where something inside Roger irreparably cracked, and he’d spend the next decade of his and Djokovic’s rivalry in a state of brutal psychological submission interrupted by the occasional outlying triumph. Jolly good match otherwise, though!
Rating: 33
5 (rep), 5 (stakes), 5 (hist), 5 (drama), 5 (length), 4 (qual), 4 (moments)
6. 2009 Australian Open F: Nadal d. Federer (7-5, 3-6, 7-6, 3-6, 6-2)
Does Federer get enough credit as an icon of masculinity? During matches, he was a model of European stoicism and aloof self-containment compared to his two more outwardly reactive rivals. But after match points in particularly devastating or triumphant or poignant circumstances, the guy cried a lot. One of the most enduring images from his long career is the moment after his final competitive match, a doubles loss alongside Nadal at the 2022 Laver Cup, where cameras captured the two aging superstars crying and holding hands. In an era widely characterized by scaled masculine toxicity even within tennis, the image was striking in how directly it confronted the stereotypical presentation of manliness in sports — not just crying but crying and holding hands with a man who had witnessed or caused your greatest triumphs and defeats — and beyond that, modern culture. Federer walked so Gus Walz could run.
That image neatly bookends Roger’s previously best-known tearful moment, his outpouring after losing the blistering 2009 AO final to Rafa, a pantheon-level five-setter only a hair less compelling than their previous slam meeting (Wimbledon ‘08). This was perhaps their most purely entertaining face-off in a major final, and features some of the most electrifying shotmaking during this phase of their rivalry. S4G5, in which Fed fought off five break points en route to sending the match to a decider, belongs in a time capsule illustrating the possibilities of physical human achievement. This preceded the final pendulum swing in Nadal’s direction after what had been a riveting tug of war: Roger losing the first set after blowing a 4-2 lead; Roger intensifying his ground attack to take the second set even though his first serve had abandoned him; Rafa claiming third after Roger’s deflating double-fault; Rafa’s insurmountable surge early in the fifth.
Who can blame Federer for getting emotional after such a draining loss? But when he said, “God, it’s killing me,” it was clear something deeper was going on, that he’d lost something essential by training himself into a performance machine in a binary game. Rafa’s sportsmanly hug and his insistence that “You’re a great champion, you proved that,” was a moment of tenderness that bonded the two players both as historical rivals and figures that transcended their sport. As the world grew ever coarser in the following decade, it became obvious we could use a lot more of their energy. Thankfully there was plenty to come, at least on tennis courts.
Rating: 33
5 (rep), 4 (stakes), 5 (hist), 4 (drama), 5 (length), 5 (qual), 5 (moments)
5. 2018 Wimbledon SF: Djokovic d. Nadal (6-4, 3-6, 7-6, 3-6, 10-8)
Here are some incredible facts: The 2018 Wimbledon semifinal, the definitive encounter of the Nadal/Djokovic rivalry’s late period, was only the third-ever match between them to go into a fifth set, which seems…wrong. In this tight, thrilling contest on the least-appreciated surface in their H2H, each guy hit exactly 73 winners. Each guy ALSO hit exactly 42 unforced errors. And as the story has gone so many times, Novak just had the icier stuff in his veins when it mattered, ultimately winning 194 total points to Rafa’s paltry 191. He produced a by-then trademark late-stage turnaround by fending off a break point at 7-7 in the decider with an utterly ludicrous forehand passing shot. Even then, it could still have gone either way.
An epic in the literal sense (having spread across two days to accommodate a curfew), the match was spellbinding to the final point, and cemented Djokovic’s comeback after a couple of subpar seasons that had allowed his two fiercest opponents to regain their juice. (Federer and Nadal had split the previous six major titles.) A number of cliches apply here, primarily that it actually is too bad one of them had to lose this match.
Rating: 34
5 (rep), 4 (stakes), 5 (hist), 5 (drama), 5 (length), 5 (qual), 5 (moments)
4. 2013 French Open SF: Nadal d. Djokovic (6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 6-7, 9-7)
Is this the best men’s match ever played at Roland Garros? Ever played on clay? If this was the final, it would be rhapsodized in the same breath as, you know, THE Nadal-Djokovic final, which, as the tennis writer Steven Tignor argues here, it uncannily mirrors. First, the result — this is the only match in my top 10 that Djokovic loses, experiencing the crushing last-minute reversals of fortune and momentum that he so often inflicted on his two biggest rivals. In this case, it was an almost perfect negative image of what happened in Australia the previous year: here, Nadal took the fourth set in a tiebreak and was down a service break at 4-2 in the decider, only to dig his heels in and methodically reverse the match’s direction. Like in Australia, a pivotal late error ended up changing the gravity of the whole contest: Djokovic, still up a break and serving for a 5-3 lead, touched the net on what would have been an overhead winner, costing him the point and, understandably, his composure. It’s not like he fell apart after that, but he’d only take one more game as Nadal exerted dominion over his litter box yet again — and, as a reward, got to pick his teeth with poor David Ferrer in the final.
If I wanted to pick a moment about which to rhapsodize, there is a lot of material for the choosing. How about that amazing exchange in S5G10, when Djokovic has the upper hand, lacing an inside-out forehand approach shot that sends Nadal out wide, where the Spaniard flicks a desperation half-lob, half-passing shot that prompts the commentator to calmly declare “It’s in” well before it lands? In a match full of miracles, why wouldn’t it have been in?
By now the supply of metaphors to describe these Nadal-Djokovic epics is well-exhausted (which is too bad, given the remaining Nadal-Djokovic match on this list). Are they Olympian gods throwing lightning bolts at each other? Parisian artisans collaborating on a masterpiece for the ages? Atoms colliding to produce quantum-level reactions in a particle accelerator? Gladiators locked in life-and-death combat before a bloodthirsty throng? Climbers reaching impossible altitudes to summit the highest peak of their sport? Sure, why not! But Roland Garros 2013 demonstrates not so much the accuracy of such lofty prose to characterize the apex of a world-historically great sports rivalry but rather the insufficiency of words to often describe what a person is witnessing — in this case, the best match ever played on clay.
Rating: 34
5 (rep), 4 (stakes), 5 (hist), 5 (drama), 5 (length), 5 (qual), 5 (moments)
3. 2017 Australian Open F: Federer d. Nadal (6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3)
Admittedly, there are sentimental reasons for how highly I’ve ranked this match. Is this a consensus choice for the upper-upper tier of the Big Three era of Grand Slam tennis, in terms of pure athleticism, especially when considered alongside Nadal-Djokovic at Wimbledon ‘18 or Roland Garros ‘13? Perhaps not. Here, the symbolism does a lot of the lifting. We have the sport’s two statesmen, outfitted absurdly in matching day-glo Nike gear, each different distances from various statistical primes and in different phases of remarkable comebacks nearly a decade removed from the heyday of their rivalry, taking each other, somehow, somewhere new.
Obviously this victory was of great significance to Federer fans, coming as it did after a nearly five-year drought in which he not only failed to nab his ever-elusive 18th major title, but at a time when the idea of him doing so became almost mythically remote. After Wimbledon 2012, there were a few cycles of comeback momentum — he did make Wimbledon finals runs in 2014 and ‘15 and got to the ‘15 U.S. Open final without dropping a set, journeys that would end with disappointment that always involved Djokovic. Federer entered the 2017 Australian Open seeded 17th, having sat out the last half of the previous season due to a knee surgery, which meant he had to take out three top-10 players before even reaching the final, where, poetically, inevitably, Rafa awaited.
They traded the first four workmanlike sets, in which there were symmetrical shifts in direction but no tiebreaks or real suspense. Rightly, everyone remembers this match for the fifth set. After Roger went down a break to 1-3, I had resigned myself to his defeat and almost closed my laptop, on which I’d been watching the match via a janky illegal Russian sports-streaming site at what would have been about 6 in the morning. I thought, “Well, he did pretty good for a guy his age” (my age), and prepared to return to my own life of diminishing returns. And then, holy shit, Roger flipped the script, not just on the set and match but on the whole last chapter of his and Nadal’s rivalry, and for a little while, the entropic cruelty of time itself.
He patiently wrestled away control of the set, along the way playing arguably the best point of his career — which prompted a stunned TV commentator to declare, “I will never, ever forget that rally” — and slowly turning vulnerability into advantage. He would win five straight games and secure a storybook victory that heralded one of the unlikeliest comebacks in the sport’s history, outflanking his toughest foil and, however briefly, the dying of the light.
Rating: 34
5 (rep), 4 (stakes), 5 (hist), 5 (drama), 5 (length), 5 (qual), 5 (moments)
2. 2012 Australian Open F: Djokovic d. Nadal (5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-7, 7-5)
In Big Three discourse, there are Aussie 2012 people and there are Wimbledon 2008 people. The distinction feels similar to music rivalries: Beatles people versus Stones people, Backstreet Boys people versus *NSync people, Blur people versus Oasis people. And so — big reveal! — I am indeed a Wimbledon ‘08 person.
The preferences that determine one’s loyalty become encoded with so much context that they end up saying more about the person making the judgment than the thing itself. Do you prefer a stadium full of drunk Aussies after midnight to the perfumed topiary gardens of the All England Lawn Tennis Club? Do you prefer the industrialized violence of trench warfare to a meeting of master duelists? Do you LIKE seeing Djokovic win? If so, then have I ever got a match for you.
Credit where it is absolutely due: These guys were in a different dimension that night in Melbourne. In this famously grueling slugfest, the points are breathtaking, the tension almost overpowering, the athleticism superhuman. The two best players in the world delivered the perfect consummation of their rivalry, at least for Djokovic, who had dominated their recent encounters, including the previous year’s Wimbledon and U.S. Open finals. Each guy produced directional shifts and impossible comebacks within sets that felt like entire matches unto themselves, none more gripping than the fifth, where Nadal served at 4-2 and led the game before a couple of tragic unforced errors — one backhand approach shot up the line that should have been an easy put-away, one awkward shoestring forehand at the baseline — turned everything in Novak’s direction. Rallies extended past 30 shots deep into the night, just one hold-my-beer exchange after another.
But revisiting the 2012 Australian Open final made me think of what Roger Ebert said about “Aliens,” James Cameron’s 1986 action-movie follow-up to “Alien,” the austere sci-fi classic from the late ‘70s. He wrote:
I don’t know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I’m not sure ‘Aliens’ is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft.
I rewatched this match, and, like when Ebert had his senses assaulted by the excesses of ‘80s blockbuster filmmaking, I too felt drained. I felt this vicariously on behalf of the combatants, but also personally, because it is pretty exhausting to watch. The gladiatorial near-sadism of it is almost too much, well-illustrated by the image of Djokovic ripping his shirt off in celebration, then having to sit aside Nadal during the trophy presentation because both of them, after nearly six punishing hours of tennis, were too depleted to stand.
People who insist this is the best Big Three match ever played, or even the best match-match, do have a strong case. It is the keynote, most representative iteration of the Djokovic-Nadal rivalry, which in the end proved more viscerally thrilling than Fedal. If that’s your jam, you’ll hear no protest from me. You’ll also hear none of the primal grunts, verging on tortured screams, that rang out for nearly a quarter of a day into the sweltering Australian darkness as the two most relentless men to ever hold tennis rackets carved their own faces into the Mount Rushmore of sporting eternity. Just writing that made me want to tear off my shirt.
Rating: 34
5 (rep), 4 (stakes), 5 (hist), 5 (drama), 5 (length), 5 (qual), 5 (moments)
1. 2008 Wimbledon F: Nadal d. Federer (6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 9-7)
I came a long way just to end up with the conclusion I knew was coming. From a strictly analytical perspective, Wimbledon ‘08 wins because it is the only match on this list that I awarded a full five points in all seven categories. I realize the logical circularity of attempting to use my own (half-assed) system as a decisive data point. But I gave Australia ‘12 a deduction in the “stakes” field because there was ever-so-slightly less riding on it. These are the reasons:
Djokovic had won his previous six matches against Nadal and was favored going into the 2012 season, so there wasn’t as much of an underdog story unfolding.
Federer and Nadal’s contrasting styles are more pronounced and more narratively cohesive (righty versus lefty; elegance versus doggedness, establishment versus insurgent; conventional kit versus pirate pants and exposed biceps). That explains why there are whole-ass books and documentaries about Wimbledon ‘08.
It is commonly noted that the No. 1 ranking was on the line at this final, but that’s only true in the sense that the guy who won eventually became the top-ranked player and couldn’t have done it without winning. Nadal overtook Federer, but not until the following month.
The “changing of the guard” element gets a bit overstated as well. Federer would go on to compete in the finals of the next six slams, winning four of them (including the following year’s Wimbledon), whereas Nadal in that timeframe only made it to one.
But Federer had beaten Nadal in the previous two Wimbledon finals, during which time Nadal was getting closer to toppling Roger on his favorite surface, whereas Federer seemingly was falling further behind on clay.
The conditions in London were dramatic and apocalyptic: freakish winds, multiple rain delays, the final points unfolding in questionable visibility (in the last year before Centre Court added a roof and lights, no less) that facilitated the timeless image of camera flashes puncturing the gathering dark as Nadal secured his upset.
The actual stats suggest the tennis was better in this match, depending on what we mean by that — in the 2012 AO final, both players hit more unforced errors than winners; the reverse is true of Wimbledon ‘08. Serving-wise, Nadal and Djokovic were more evenly matched in 2012 than Nadal and Federer were at Wimbledon. But for the experience of watching a match, the winner/unforced error stat feels more relevant.
The match itself had a more clearly defined internal arc than 2012 AO. Rafa’s early two-set-to-love lead seemed to affirm the story of the throne-usurping-underdog, but Federer’s near-comeback expanded the clash, and Rafa’s ultimate achievement, to almost religious proportions. And Roger went down in the most epic fashion possible — forcing a fifth set by winning the second or third-best Wimbledon tiebreaker ever, in which he hit a world-historically great passing shot on Nadal’s championship point (which Nadal had earned with his OWN world-historically great passing shot).
The first point of the match is the entire contest in microcosm: a spirited strategic battle that Nadal ultimately won. Federer recently acknowledged that he knew he had already lost the match after that exchange. If that’s true, he still gave it a hell of a fight.
Only one of these matches had an indifferent-looking Gwen Stefani in the players’ box, seemingly oblivious to the history unfolding just feet away from her. Talk about stakes.
The absurdity of trying to rank matches against each other — to try and impose continuity or structure on past events that are only tangentially connected — is not lost on me. How do you measure one span of a few hours against another, years apart, and come to the judgment that what happened in one chunk of time was “better” than what happened in another? (A question I might have considered before sinking untold hours into the topic.)
Also: What does it even mean to be the best tennis match of all time? I sure as hell don’t know, but the best Big Three slam match was definitely the 2008 Wimbledon final.
Rating: 35
5 (rep), 5 (stakes), 5 (hist), 5 (drama), 5 (length), 5 (qual), 5 (moments)