Carlos Alcaraz delivers the nicest challenge to Jannik Sinner ever

The Big 3 is seemingly beginning to completely fade away. Roger Federer is done, Rafael Nadal cannot stay consistently healthy and might not play much more, and Novak Djokovic is rumored to be losing focus on tennis and might not want to maintain the effort it takes to keep trying to win majors and be atop the ATP rankings. A great era of tennis is coming to a close.

Tennis has gone through some down years between eras before. Following the excellence of the 1970s and 1980s, with players such as John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, and a young Boris Becker, the 1990s had Andre Agassi with lots of personality but Pete Sampras was an iconic player without an iconic persona. Thankfully, tennis might have a quick rebound from the Big 3 as young players such as Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz seem ready to take on the limelight and be the faces of men's tennis.

It would be nice to add another player or two to the budding rivalry. Always needing Sinner to face Alcaraz to draw a lot of eyes to watch any given tournament is not ideal. So far, though, there does not seem to be another young player ready to give Alcaraz and Sinner consistent issues. Holger Rune might one day, but he also seems quite mercurial.

Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner rivalry might have one huge issue

For now, at least, fans watching men's tennis will simply have to be satisfied with Alcaraz versus Sinner. We should be thankful to have that, though, as both players have already won a Grand Slam, both are ranked inside the top three currently with a good chance of being the top two ranked players by the end of the year. Each has their own goals, of course, and their own way of reaching those goals, but they also seem to have an awareness that they need each other to elevate the sport.

Alcaraz recently might have thrown the nicest of gauntlets down in a challenge not only to Sinner but to himself. According to Tennis-Infinity, Alcaraz said, "We all know about the rivalry Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have had. Let’s hope I can have that amazing rivalry with Jannik. I hope he pressures me to give 100 percent and we can both improve."

One could interpret that as Alcaraz saying, "Let's see if Sinner can truly keep up his current form and be able to keep up with my greatness." But we can assume that the Spaniard did not mean that for one clear reason and part of what separates the potential excellence of a Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz from nearly any other. That reason is that both Alcaraz and Sinner seem to be honestly nice people.

Fans might have difficulty rooting against either playing when they are not playing each other. We might not want Sinner and Alcaraz to play in dozens of finals because it is good for the sport, but because we like them both. That could be the major problem with the rivalry growing the sport. Many times it's good to have a person to sports-hate. That is not going to happen with the young Spaniard and young Italian.

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