What We’ll Remember From 2022: Tennis
As 2022 winds down, Sports Illustrated is looking back at the themes and teams, story lines and through lines that shaped the year.
In a sport with no clock, nothing in tennis ends with predictability, or on a reliable timetable. Thus, it’s fitting that the end of the sport’s Great Generation is something more akin to continents drifting apart than a Big Bang or a scoreboard showing no time remaining.
The year 2022 started with four active players in the sport, incredibly, brandishing 20 or more major titles. It ended with two. Roger Federer and Serena Williams, now both age 41, announced their retirements, unequivocally in his case, kindasorta in hers. But the two remaining titans—Rafael Nadal, 36, and Novak Djokovic, 35—combined to win three of the year's four majors; and Djokovic closed the season playing perhaps as well as ever. So, it’s the end of era. Except not really.
Then again, awkward, arrhythmic transition was a seam that ran through the entire tennis season.
In conventional years, tennis sheds its niche status at the Australian Open, breaking through to a larger audience. But in 2022, the pre-tournament drama outstripped the attention (and tension) of most matches. Given assurances that he would be admitted into the country despite his choice to forego a Covid vaccination, Novak Djokovic, the event’s nine-time champ, was detained upon arrival in Australia. His status became an international cause celebre, became the source of a countless hot takes, and became— to mix sports metaphors—a political football. And on the eve of the tournament, Djokovic was deported.
Suddenly resurgent, Rafael Nadal used the opportunity to win the title, the 21st major of his career, breaking a three-way tie and vaulting him past Djokovic and Federer on the all-time list. The women’s title, meanwhile, went to Australia’s Ash Barty, the first homegrown player to win in nearly a half-century. Her status atop the sport cemented, she celebrated by….retiring a few weeks later.
Just when tennis seemed to be reeling with unreliability, Poland’s Iga Swiatek, became the new No.1, made the most of her battlefield promotion, winning 37 straight matches, including the requisite seven at the French Open. And Nadal performed his annual rite of spring and won at Roland Garros for, comically, the 14th time. For the first time in his career, he won the first two legs of the Grand Slam.
Ah, stability.
And the tennis gods laughed.
In response to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Wimbledon bowed to governmental pressure and unilaterally banned Russian players. The tours responded by stripping the event of ranking points and suing the tournament. Djokovic won the men’s title for the seventh time (perspective: one fewer than Federer), drawing within a major of Nadal, 22-21. And, because no sport does self-owning as elaborately as tennis does, Elena Rybakina, a Russian-born, Russian-residing powerhouse, competing under the Kazakh flag, took the women’s trophy.
Before the tournament, Serena Williams announced that the 2022 U.S. Open would mark the final event of her unrivaled career. The first week of the tournament felt like a rightfully-deserved extended tribute to her with a tennis event tacked on. In the second week, time doubled back and halved itself, and the event was hijacked by a 19-year-old Spaniard, Carlos Alcaraz, who won the first major (likely of many) of his career and ascended to No.1 in the rankings.
Yet, the year’s most memorable single moment, occurred not at a major but at a team event. Federer announced that the Laver Cup, which he’d created, would mark the sunset of his career. Visibly compromised by his lingering knee injury, he played doubles alongside Nadal in his final match.
Afterwards: a poignant, bittersweet retirement ceremony, during which, unforgettably, Federer and Nadal, sitting together and leaking tears, held hands.
It was almost imperceptible. In fact, neither claim to even remember until the gesture was called to their attention. Yet it encapsulated so much. This shared sense of sports mortality, maybe real mortality. This mutual appreciation for a rivalry that may have been a see-saw, but, finally, elevated both of them. They shared an acknowledgement of finality, their sports mortality laid bare.
Then, later that weekend, in a breathtaking decisive match at Laver Cup, Frances Tiafoe, an expressive American beat the contemplative Greek player, Stefanos Tsitsipas. And this may have well have been the ultimate metaphor for the entire sport, during this period of change. Time wins. Time is undefeated. Time waits for no one. But there are, waiting in abundance, are other players and other storylines. —Jon Wertheim
Novak Djokovic vs. the Majors: How Did We Get Here? By Chris Almeida and Jon Wertheim
When he arrived in Melbourne, Djokovic's visa was canceled and he was refused entry to the country. Then the Australian government put him into a detention hotel where it houses refugees, sometimes for years. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Djokovic wouldn't "be treated any different to anyone else," while the star’s treatment was criticized by the Serbian president as an affront to the entire country. Djokovic’s father, Srdjan, compared his son’s detention to the crucifixion of Jesus.
Rafael Nadal Is Happy to Wear the Crown By Jon Wertheim
Athletes are supposed to be more jaded and less accessible as they age; Nadal has gone the opposite direction. The most focused and passionate competitors are supposed to be the first to burn out; Nadal’s matches still come across as sponsored content for intensity. The most physical player in tennis history wasn’t supposed to be around for this long. By his own admission, Nadal will never have Federer’s easy grace or Djokovic’s crisp precision. But on he goes. All of which makes for a good reminder that in tennis, as life, magic comes in many forms.
‘Pickleball Is the Wild, Wild West’: Inside the Fight Over the Fastest-Growing Sport in America By John Walters
Pickleball: the progeny of tennis and Ping-Pong. The new shuffleboard. “Half-court basketball for elderly people,” as actor Jeff Daniels put it.
Or so you thought.
You might have read about the sport with a silly name and 4.8 million adherents. Or seen your local park or tennis club—or Leo DiCaprio—install a pickleball court, or a dozen. Or heard that college hoops coaches Scott Drew (of Baylor) and Mark Few (Gonzaga), played each other in the Final Four bubble last year. Or caught Drew Brees’s recent tweet about his football afterlife: “I may train for the pickleball tour.”“Pickleball is the social media influencer of the sports world,” Kelly Ripa said on Live With Kelly and Ryan. “I’d never heard about it. And then I only hear about it.”
Serena Williams Changed Sports Forever By Jon Wertheim
Her career has not merely been cinematic, but literary. There is a gripping story, but also larger themes. She has been unmistakably the heroine, the protagonist, but there are rich supporting characters. Her story comes with rising and falling actions, plot points, conflicts and resolutions. Not unlike a tennis match, it can be divided into sections. There was an electric beginning and hefty middle and, so far, a graceful conclusion.
Steffi Graf Is Still Too Famous for Steffi Graf By Jon Wertheim
Backstory: For years, I had tried to write this story with Graf’s participation. In 2016, when Agassi swung by the SI offices. We joked about the hardships I was having landing an audience with his wife. “Good luck with that,” he said, good-naturedly laughing at this quest.
Tennis’s Most Dynamic Player Is Also Its Most Difficult By Jon Wertheim
For going on a decade now, Kyrgios has cleaved the Republic of Tennis, creating two sides, roughly equal in proportion, that may as well be divided by a net. He is either the box-office shotmaker, the candid and charismatic and compellingly volatile McEnroe-meets-Draymond bundle of unpredictability that will bring freshness and electricity, bring in the kids and bring change to a tradition-choked sport.
Or he is an unhinged narcissistic brat (or something still darker), who competes like a coward and respects nothing—not his opponents, not his sport, not his predecessors, and not least his own talents.
Or both.
It’s complicated.
Carlos Alcaraz Arrives Ahead of Schedule As the World’s Best By Chris Almeida and Jon Wertheim
Carlos Alcaraz is our U.S. Open men's singles champion for 2022. He made, by his standards, quick work of Casper Ruud in the final: 6–4, 2–6, 7–6 (1), 6–3. And, boy, you can't say he didn't earn it. He did everything you could possibly ask him to do over the course of the tournament: win long matches, short matches, late matches, early matches. Beat young players, old players. Everything. This guy is going to be good for a long time.
Roger Federer Leaves Behind Distinct, Beautiful Mark on Tennis By Jon Wertheim
The country of Switzerland is flush with fountains. But you are unlikely ever to see people throwing coins into one. A tradition virtually everywhere else in the world, this ritual never caught on in Switzerland for a simple reason. There’s no need to wish for good luck when you already have it. As one native son put it, “Only the poor have to hope.”
This theme of abundance and extravagance—and recognition of good fortune—echoed through the career of Switzerland’s most towering athlete. Roger Federer, who announced his retirement from tennis Thursday at the age of 41, always seemed to have plenty. Plenty of charm. Plenty of time. Plenty of decency. Of course, plenty of talent.
