You can feel very good for Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
You can feel a little bit bad for Roger Federer.
Either way, however, it wasn’t hard at all to feel very good for tennis, specifically the ATP Tour, to have Tsonga outpoint Federer in the final of the Rogers Cup on Sunday.
For a limited time get Sportsnet Magazine’s digital edition free for 60 days. Visit Appstore/RogersMagazines to see what you’re missing out on.
This, for those who may not have noticed, has been a golden era for tennis. Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic will likely all go down as among the best to have ever played the sport, and Andy Murray has chimed in from time to time to make it the Big Four.
But the Big Four has become so overwhelming dominant that the sheer excellence of this group of stars has threatened to drown out the rest of the tour.
It’s a little bit like that scene in Bull Durham when Crash Davis lectures Nuke Laloosh on trying to strike everyone out all the time.
“Strikeouts are boring. Beside that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls – it’s more democratic.”
Tennis, the men’s tour, could use a little democracy these days, and Tsonga delivered it at the Rexall Centre on Sunday afternoon.
You can love the brilliance of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, and still yearn for the occasional upset and opportunity for somebody else to shine on centre stage. It has become rather predictable in the game’s big events to see the same faces in the finals and taking home the winner’s cheques.
Stan Wawrinka changed that in January when he beat Nadal to win the Australian Open, ending the stranglehold the Big Four have held on Grand Slam events for years.
Wawrinka was 29, the same age as Tsonga when he beat Federer in straight sets on Sunday. Neither player was an upstart, in other words, but rather a player who has paid their dues for years, suffering setback after setback when it has mattered most to the Big Four.
For Wawrinka, it was his first Grand Slam after a decade of living in Federer’s Swiss shadow. Tsonga, meanwhile, had only won one previous Masters 1000 event and no Grand Slam titles, and for years, had either fallen just short of bigger triumphs or been stopped time and time again by the Big Four.
Just this year, he was knocked off by Federer in the Aussie Open, then Djokovic at Roland Garros, then Djokovic again at Wimbledon. A knee injury ruined his season in 2013, but beyond that, he has been for years the player who had the talent but consistently fell short.
Until Sunday. Until the conversation in the men’s game heading towards the U.S. Open later this month was changed dramatically.
Nadal didn’t play in Toronto, while Tsonga defeated Djokovic, Murray and Federer, now setting himself up as a player to be watched in New York. Nadal is injured, Murray hasn’t made a final since winning Wimbledon 2013 – he had back surgery last fall – and Federer is 2-5 in finals this year and is no longer The Closer, the player who sniffs a championship and almost never is denied.
Djokovic is No. 1 and this year’s Wimbledon champ, but Tsonga tuned him up in two dominant sets last week, thereby inserting himself as an important variable as the tour hurtles towards the final major of the season.
The tour needs the young guns like Milos Raonic, Kei Nishikori and Grigor Dimitrov – also beaten by Tsonga in Toronto – but it also needs more established players capable of interrupting the Big Four now and then. It’s bad timing, to some degree, for players like Wawrinka and Tsonga to have come along at a time when a small clutch of players are greedily snapping up all the big tournaments, and there’s some poetic justice in players so talented getting a small piece of the pie.
Wawrinka and Tsonga are, quite clearly, two players capable of winning the U.S. Open, although neither will be a favourite. But the fact there is viable evidence to point to from this tennis season to suggest both are capable of defeating the members of the Big Four head-to-head, rather than capitalizing on fluke and happenstance to win an important title, means including them in discussions as possible winners in Flushing Meadows isn’t just a transparent effort to drum up false drama.
Tsonga’s victory over Federer on Sunday was a big achievement for the Man From Le Mans, and a tough loss for the Swiss.
But for those who like their tennis unscripted, or at least sometimes unpredictable, it was a welcome twist in the plot. Where there was little doubt before, there is considerable doubt now. Which just makes the golden era that much better.
And that much more democratic.