Carlos Alcaraz among three takeaways from Wimbledon

The ATP and WTA will have two different issues atop the rankings moving forward

There is a catch-22 when it comes to sports. People generally don’t like one team or one person to always win because eventually, the fan of the opponent loses interest if their favorite never wins either. It’s a bit like being a fan of the Washington Generals and expecting them to truly compete with the Harlem Globetrotters. But then fans don’t normally like too much parity either.

On the men’s side, Carlos Alcaraz is clearly the best player currently and no one is even remotely close to him other than Novak Djokovic. But Djokovic is much closer to the end of his career than the beginning while Alcaraz is the complete opposite. Alcaraz could dominate his sport for the next decade and that’s not good for tennis in general. The Big 3 – Roger Feder, Rafael Nadal, and Djokovic – were pushed and made better by the others, and the entire sport was better for it.

On the women’s side, however, there is no true alpha. Iga Swiatek has been number one for more than a year, and while she is an excellent player on some surfaces she definitely has weaknesses and her long-time ranking doesn’t truly seem to compare to greats like Monica Seles or Steffi Graf. It honestly just feels like fans of the WTA are waiting for some player to overtake Swiatek and then we might have chaos atop the rankings for quite some time.

Ideally, some other young player – Jannik Sinner or Holger Rune, maybe – improves their game enough to challenge Alcaraz for the foreseeable future while a few different women – Swiatek, along with Ons Jabeur, or Elina Rybakina possibly – will hopefully prove their dominance over the rest of the field while battling with each other for Grand Slams.