The last decade-plus of men’s professional tennis has been
dominated by four players: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray. These men combined to win every Grand Slam but one from
the 2005 French Open through the end of 2013.
This remarkable stretch of hegemony was always going to end
eventually; time always wins, after all. 2014 saw the forming of the
initial cracks in the Big Four’s dominance, with the season producing multiple
first-time Grand Slam winners (Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic) for the first
time since 2003. Throw in breakout years from youngsters like US Open finalist
Kei Nishikori and Wimbledon semifinalists Milos Raonic and Grigor Dimitrov, and
you’ve got a worthy set of challengers to the once-impregnable upper echelon.
Meanwhile, some members of the Big Four started to show
seams. Nadal lost in Barcelona for the first time in over a decade, absorbed a
similarly early exit in Monte Carlo, and narrowly squeezed out clay titles in
Rio (facing down multiple match points in the semifinals) and Madrid (falling
behind by a set and a break until an injury to Nishikori allowed Nadal to
rally, and eventually forced his opponent to withdraw); he then missed the
North American hard court swing (including the US Open) due to injury, and accomplished little after returning to the court in September. But at
least Rafa won the French Open again, and made the Australian Open final.
Murray didn’t make a single final at any level of the tour between his historic
Wimbledon triumph in 2013 and the 250-point event in Shenzen in September of
this year, a 14-month gap.
The group’s other two members fared rather better; Federer
rallied from an injury-dampened 2013 to win a quintet of titles and lead
Switzerland to its first-ever Davis Cup crown, while Djokovic bested Federer in
a classic Wimbledon final and took seven total titles in securing the ATP’s #1
spot for the third time. Even these two, however, had their moments of frailty;
Djokovic’s streak of 14 Grand Slam semifinals was broken by Wawrinka in
Melbourne, while Federer lost to the mercurial Ernests Gulbis in the round of
16 at Roland Garros. Both men would also absorb the occasional puzzling defeat
in Masters events, with Djokovic’s loss to Tommy Robredo in Cincinnati and Federer's defeat by Jeremy Chardy in Rome serving as particular standouts. Great as they were, neither was quite as ironclad as
they’d once been.
So with that in mind, let’s dust off the Melog 75 tennis
ranking system (the initial form of which was laid out in these three posts; I have since made a couple of modifications that don’t really affect the top
players at all, though I still think they’re fairly important and can go into
further detail if there’s any interest), and see who it thinks were the best
players of 2014: