The gap is closing. With his marathon victory last night in the US Open final over Daniil Medvedev, Rafael Nadal is up to 19 career major titles, second only to Roger Federer, who holds 20. Lurking in third place is Novak Djokovic, with 16, who was favored at Flushing Meadows this year, but retired due to injury in the fourth round.
Just two weeks ago, Djokovic seemed to be the biggest threat to Federer’s place atop the leaderboard. Now, with Nadal only one back and Djokovic dealing with another round of physical problems, Rafa has the momentum. Federer, now 38 years old, appears increasingly unlikely to pad his own total.
In an attempt to foresee the future of the grand slam leaderboard, I built a straightforward algorithm last month to predict future major titles. In the spirit of baseball’s “Marcel” projection system, it aims to be so simple that a monkey could do it. It uses the bare minimum of inputs: final-four performance at the last two years’ worth of slams, and age. It trades some optimization in favor of simplicity and ease of understanding. The result is pretty darn good. You can review the algorithm itself and look at how it would have performed in the past in my earlier article here.
Solve for RN = 19 + x
Before the US Open, the algorithm seemed tailor-made to aggravate as many fanbases as possible. It predicted that, over the next five years, Djokovic would win four more majors, Nadal two more, and Federer none, leaving the big three in a tie.
One more slam in the books, and the numbers have changed. Here is the revised forecast, reflecting both Nadal’s 19th slam and his rosier outlook after adding another title to his list of recent results:
Player Slams Forecast Total Rafael Nadal 19 3.5 22.5 Roger Federer 20 0.3 20.3 Novak Djokovic 16 3.5 19.5
Rafa is in line to improve his total by at least three slams. By the time he’s done, perhaps he will have left Djokovic and Federer in the dust, and we’ll be speculating about whether he’ll catch Serena Williams … or Margaret Court.
More forecasts
My basic algorithm allows us to generate future slam forecasts for any player with at least one major semi-final in the last two years. Keep in mind that I’m not forecasting career slam totals–I’m looking ahead to only the next five years. For the big three, I’m assuming we don’t need to worry about 2025 and beyond.
We have current projections for 18 players:
Player Forecast Novak Djokovic 3.5 Rafael Nadal 3.5 Daniil Medvedev 0.8 Dominic Thiem 0.7 Stefanos Tsitsipas 0.6 Matteo Berrettini 0.5 Hyeon Chung 0.4 Lucas Pouille 0.3 Kyle Edmund 0.3 Roger Federer 0.3 Grigor Dimitrov 0.1 Marco Cecchinato 0.1 Marin Cilic 0.0 Juan Martin del Potro 0.0 Roberto Bautista Agut 0.0 Kevin Anderson 0.0 Kei Nishikori 0.0 John Isner 0.0
Most of these guys have only a single recent semi-final to their name, and the only thing to separate them is their age. It seems logical to be more optimistic about the future slam performance of Stefanos Tsitsipas (age 21) than that of Roberto Bautista Agut (age 31), even though the algorithm sees their results so far–one semi-final appearance in the last 12 months–as identical.
Five years means 20 slams, and you might notice that the above table doesn’t get close to accounting for all of them. The projections add up to 10.8 majors, leaving plenty of room for players who haven’t even qualified for the list–Alexander Zverev and Felix Auger-Aliassime come to mind. At the 2024 US Open, we’re sure to look back at our late-2019 prognostications and laugh.
Federer will keep his spot at the top of the game’s most important leaderboard for at least four more months. Djokovic will probably be the top pick in Melbourne, so Roger could well enjoy nine more months as the only 20-slam man. But you won’t need an algorithm–even a simple one–to identify the favorite at Roland Garros next year. Organized men’s tennis lasted over a century without a 20-time major champion. In less than a year, we could have two.