Predictions for the 2010s

[Doctor MJ]

Give me your predictions for the next decade. Respond however you want, but some questions you could answer:

10 players most likely to be Player of the Decade?
Top 10 players of the decade?
Top players on each surface?

[Slava]

Don't you think a decade is too long a period to make a prediction in tennis? For all I know a 14 year old kid right now could be the most dominant player of the next decade.

[Doctor MJ]

Don't you think a decade is too long a period to make a prediction in tennis? For all I know a 14 year old kid right now could be the most dominant player of the next decade.

lol, well I'm not expecting 100% accuracy from anyone. It's totally a fair point that the best player of the next decade could be someone none of us have heard of. In fact, I think that's a pretty solid possibility on the women's side. I'm just curious about people's thoughts.

[Slava]

The biggest impact with what evidence we have will be made by Nadal. Once he returns to full health it will be interesting to see how many slams he can finish with.

Del Potro obviously seems like a contender with his consistency throughout this season but I don't see too much into his match up advantage over Rafa.

Djokovic could be the next Andy Roddick to miss out on slam wins but be consistently good for a long time.

Murray should be lucky to win a slam.

There are other young players like Monfils, Tsonga etc but none have shown the consistency needed to win slams.

On the women's side its really impossible to predict. SOme people are high on Wozniacki but I did not like her attitude in the US open finals. She seemed glad enough to have made it to that point.

Melanie Oudin looks like asafer bet to me to do well.

[Marmoset]

I don't think you can go more than about 5 years because it's just too hard to predict. For the men, I think the majority of the top 10 players in even 5 years will mostly be guys we haven't heard of, or guys who we might have heard of but are not yet highly ranked players. Del Potro and Cilic are two who could be up there.

I also think Djokovic stays up there. I agree somewhat with the Roddick-Djokovic comparison in terms of being consistently good, except I think Djokovic will have about 4 slams or so when he's done. Two differences: 1) the Federer obstacle will be removed soon, at least as a dominant player, and 2) Djokovic is mentally stronger compared to Roddick at the current point of his career, and I think that will be the difference in some big matches in the next few years. Murray is a wild card - I think he could go either way.

I think the men's game is entering a period which will resemble the years before Federer's dominance, where many different players will win slams and the number 1 ranking will change hands regularly. But I could be wrong - maybe a guy like Del Potro takes over.

For the women:

On the women's side its really impossible to predict. SOme people are high on Wozniacki but I did not like her attitude in the US open finals. She seemed glad enough to have made it to that point.

I understand that concern, but I wouldn't worry too much about it because she's very young. Djokovic seemed to have much the same attitude at times when losing to Federer in the 2007 U.S. Open final, and went on to win the next slam. That said, I have no idea what will happen with the women, other than I think that in 2-4 years nearly all of the women winning slams will be women who have not won any yet. Williams, Williams, Clijsters, Henin, Kuznetsova all likely to not be near the top more than a few more years. Sharapova might be the only one to stick around longer, if she can stay healthy.

[8pLEBRON]

Sharapova is looking more injury prone than Henin, Clijsters, Williamses at this point. Williams sisters only really get tendinitis, and that doesn't send you into retirement, it just comes when you play too much tennis in succession and then goes away with rest. They seem more prone to it for some reason, thats why they play abbreviated schedules (and still get it in their wrists and knees). They've outlasted every other top player of their generation though.

Henin and Clijsters just get nagging injuries, nothing career threatening, they retired because they were sick of the grind, and now they miss it and should hang around a while (until they miss their families). Sharapova looks like she's one injury away from retirement, she had shoulder surgery in October 2008, a serious thing for someone fairly young.

As for Djokovic, he's done. At least as far as winning anymore slams goes, he just doesn't seem to have any fight in him. I saw his semi at the US v federer, it was awful. He just wants to be liked by the crowd, wasn't there to win, didn't step up on the big points, just went through the motions and was proud of his 7-6 7-5 7-5 score. His mentality isn't in the same league as Nadal and Del Potro.