The tournament director of the Paris Masters Pioline believes Djokovic and Nadal have two seasons left at the top of the game.
Cedric Pioline got a pretty good look at many of the best young players competing at the Paris Masters this week. He also got to watch Holger Rune defeat Novak Djokovic in the final to give the Serbian only his second-ever defeat in the Paris Masters final.
Speaking about the next-gen, Pioline said:
"Among the new generation, well, it's easy to say Rune, because he qualified for the final, and he actually defeated top-10 players. Felix, as well. He's had a wonderful run. Both stand out."
He added:
"So we have three generations playing at once right now. We have the last ones with Nadal, Djokovic mainly. Tsitsipas, Zverev, unfortunately, he couldn't play today, we know why. We also have Medvedev. Thiem, will he come back? That's the big question:"
Continuing on the same topic, Pioline predicted Nadal and Djokovic to play for two more years until the others take over:
"And now we have the others, Alcaraz, Rune, Auger-Aliassime, and others. And we already see that the two that won in the intermediary generations are Thiem and Medvedev, and then we have Alcaraz winning. So it's very interesting, very exciting what's happening. Nadal and Djokovic, I think they have two seasons left:"