Brad Stine, coach of American tennis player Tommy Paul, believes Novak Djokovic is the last of the revered "Big Three" to still have an aura of invincibility around him on the tennis court.
Stine is of the opinion that although Rafael Nadal is still one of the players to beat, the Spaniard is at the late stage of his career and so could be seen as more vulnerable.
However, Stine feels that Djokovic still has an imposing aura, which is brought about by the fact that the Serbian could be unbeatable on his best day.
“Rafa, like we said, is a little bit in limbo on where he’s gonna go," said Stine on The Tennis Channel Podcast. "But, he’s certainly been much more vulnerable over the last six or eight months. I think he lost to five Americans in a row, something like that, maybe was four, I’m not sure. So, there’s a vulnerability there with him that wasn’t there before."
Regarding Djokovic however. he believes players know they won't be facing an easy challenge.
“Novak still has that aura of invincibility,” Stine said. “I think everybody else that’s in the draws, as good as Medvedev is, as good as Alcaraz is, as good as Sinner is, anybody else that you can name in the top 10, I think that everybody, not just the American guys, I feel that every single one of those guys in vulnerable.”
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
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