Davydenko on current generation..

[Jelenafan]

Article from last July 2022:

Nikolay Davydenko: "The younger generation is not good technically"

Nikolay Davydenko , former tennis world No. 3, on the NextGen and his matches against Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

www.tennisnet.com

Excerpt:

The current top players, apart from Djokovic and Nadal, "are technically not good," said Davydenko. "It's gotten more physical - strong serves, hard groundstrokes - but we still see that Nadal and Djokovic can control the new generation. They're still winning slams and beating guys ten years younger than them, which is amazing." , said the 41-year-old. "Anyway, I don't feel that the new generation is playing at an incredible level."

However, he had words of praise for Carlos Alcaraz: "He's the new Spanish Terminator! I think he has a great team with Juan Carlos Ferrero as his coach. If he stays injury-free, Alcaraz will have an incredible career."

By technical does Davydenko mean netplay, strategy during a match, etc?.

I’m reminded when 40+ old Tom Brady was asked about QB and paraphrasing was saying at his experience level there wasnt a defensive scheme opposing teams threw at him and that he hadn't seen before. Nadal & Novak have gone through these big match scenarios so many times with so many different types of opponents…

 

[El Dude]

That may be true of NextGen, but Alcaraz--and Rune--are of a different cohort. As Davydenko says, Alcaraz is different, and I'd put Rune in a similar category.

So there's a big drop with LostGen, a half-step back up with Next Gen, and then a full step up with the younger guys, or at least those two.