I would say 35 these days, and this probably applies to other sports as well (basketball/hockey/soccer etc)

 

I second this.
This is the age when I'd really start to use word "veteran", at least in men's tennis.
Most players will already decline a bit by that age but if healthy AND motivated enough they can still perform pretty close to their best level imo. They might become slightly less consistant too.
Like I've said a couple of times already I feel the real decline starts around 36-38.
But we shouldn't compare big 3 players with others imo as they've been so special and different and so much better than others that could just go on for a couple of extra years.

So to make it short: from 35 years of age someone can be called old / veteran

 

Djokovic: 18

🤔

 

Gluten-free

 

Tennis players by mid 21st century:

 

The year is 2074. 71 y.o. Carlos Alcaraz is world #1, having long exceeded the maximum possible tally of 100 Slams MTF predicted for him back in the 2020s. His biggest rival, 72 y.o. Jannik Sinner, sits at 15, still denying @enlightenedth the trophy for his Bold Prediction coming true. 77 y.o. Alexander Zverev is still trying hard to win that elusive Slam, having lost 20 finals, in 17 of which he was up 2-0 or 2-1 in sets. He's also won 50 M1000 titles, 5 Olympic golds, and 8 YECs. 75 y.o. Stefanos Tsitsipas is still being coached by his cryogenically preserved father.

 

Nowadays 33-34 is the beginning of getting old while 37-38 is absolutely old.
At least in singles.

 

There are some exceptions to this general rule. If we look at some of the shorter players on tour - like Diego Schwartzman and David Goffin - they seem to decline at a younger age, around 30-31. Probably because their game relies more on footspeed and fast reflexes. Conversely, some of the taller players - like John Isner - seem to have greater longevity if they can manage to avoid injuries.

 

Some short guys did OK, back in the day:

 

Jerry Pospisil played challenger qualies last week at age 43.

 

36, you can definitely win slams.

36-38, maybe, you can win slams, if you can slamdunk an ace on 40-15 match point.

39? We will see if Rafa can and will change this "dynamic" in RG'25, if he plays it; the only man who can at this age. No noles, no boles, no holes.

 

Nadal will do well to win back-to-back Grand Slam singles matches at the age of 39 considering his current form and current physical state.

 

About 33

 

About 35 I think...

 

Roddick and Feliciano Lopez are literally the same age, yet Feli played over a decade longer.

 

In fact, Lopez is almost a year older than Roddick.

 

These numbers can't be looked at in isolation. Roger would have more after 27 but for Rafa and Novak. Novak would have more before 28 but for Roger and Rafa.

 

And had alacaraz and Sinner been 5 years younger than djokovic rather than 15, djokovic would have had far fewer slams after 27. Context is, as you have said, everything. Which is why there is no one GOAT based on numbers.

 

Novak Djokovic = mentally toughest athlete ever, in any sport.

What a testament to his greatness -- this stat.

 

Nothing excites me more than topics like these. I will address the OP's points one by one.

Lately, I've been thinking about age, or more precisely, growing old.

My dear @Ranne, your concern is legitimate. And it has a name - the male menopause .

On a serious note - while I am not sure if one commentator's words should be taken as sacrosanct, I will still use the age of 27 (mentioned by the BBC guy and the OP) as the measuring stick.

That made me check how many slams the all-time greats won after turning 27. Here are the numbers:

Connors: 3
Borg: 0
McEnroe: 0
Lendl: 4
Wilander: 0
Edberg: 0
Becker: 1
Agassi: 5
Sampras: 3
Federer: 8
Nadal: 11
Djokovic: 18

Did you do the following?

1. Check how many slams they won before the age of 27?
2. How many slams did they play on either side of that age? For example, Connors played Australian Open twice- first in 1974 and then in 1975 winning once. He never played that tourney again. Agassi played this tournament for the first time in 1995 and it ended up giving him half his total slams.

To make this clearer, I will give numbers and percentages of many of the players mentioned by OP (the ATGs). However, some names don't make sense. Mentioning Borg is a silly thing to do since he never played a grand slam match at the age of 26 or beyond. John McEnroe similarly did play a number of slams after turning 27 but he had already declined by then due to injuries. Mats Wilander's decline started at the age of 24 soon after his epic 1988 season. Wilander's decline has several reasons, but age is certainly not one of them. It would be colossally stupid to reason that a player aged as soon as he turned 25. The same is true for Stefan Edberg (age 26). None of these four players could even reach a slam final after the age of 27.

I am therefore, giving the same list with those names removed. But we also need to set a starting point and an end point, since it is pointless to include early years and the years when the player had totally declined. To be less subjective, I am simply considering the first to last slam winning years only. This isn't accurate, since there could be pre-prime years, out-of-form years, years of injury or in a solitary case - Pete Sampras - declined years. The concept of 'good years' (which I often use) gives a better picture. But I am not going to give that here as it would lead to dogfights. So, considering slam winning span, the stats are given below:

Player	Slam winning career span	Number of slams played before turning 27	Number of slams won before turning 27	Percentage of slams won before turning 27	Number of slams played after turning 27	Number of slams won after turning 27	Percentage of slams won after turning 27
Connors	1974-1983	15	5	33.33%	12	3	25%
Lendl	1984-1990	11	4	36.36%	14	4	28.57%
Becker	1985-1996	35	5	14.29%	6	1	16.67%
Agassi	1992-2003	16	3	18.75%	24	5	20.83%
Sampras	1990-2002	33	11	33.33%	15	3	20%
Federer	2003-2018	23	12	52.17%	37	8	21.62%
Nadal	2005-2022	29	11	37.93%	30	11	36.67%
Djokovic	2008-2023	26	6	23.08%	34	18	52.94%

Looking at the table above, it must be clear that there is no definite proof that 27 causes ageing or decline. Although there are more players who won a greater percentage of slams before reaching the age in discussion, the only player for whom the difference turns out to be gargantuan is none other than our Swiss maestro. And it is virtually the opposite for Djokovic. For all other players, the difference is not to the point where we can draw immediate conclusions. And look at Nadal's numbers - they are virtually identical on each half of the table. Of course, the numbers above are a massive oversimplification as the discussed ATGs were not all 'good' in all the slams.

Bottomline: It is not AGE that matters, it is STAGE.

 

On a serious note - while I am not sure if one commentator's words should be taken as sacrosanct, I will still use the age of 27 (mentioned by the BBC guy and the OP) as the measuring stick.

Did you do the following?

1. Check how many slams they won before the age of 27?
2. How many slams did they play on either side of that age? For example, Connors played Australian Open twice- first in 1974 and then in 1975 winning once. He never played that tourney again. Agassi played this tournament for the first time in 1995 and it ended up giving him half his total slams.

To make this clearer, I will give numbers and percentages of many of the players mentioned by OP (the ATGs). However, some names don't make sense. Mentioning Borg is a silly thing to do since he never played a grand slam match at the age of 26 or beyond. John McEnroe similarly did play a number of slams after turning 27 but he had already declined by then due to injuries. Mats Wilander's decline started at the age of 24 soon after his epic 1988 season. Wilander's decline has several reasons, but age is certainly not one of them. It would be colossally stupid to reason that a player aged as soon as he turned 25. The same is true for Stefan Edberg (age 26). None of these four players could even reach a slam final after the age of 27.

I am therefore, giving the same list with those names removed. But we also need to set a starting point and an end point, since it is pointless to include early years and the years when the player had totally declined. To be less subjective, I am simply considering the first to last slam winning years only. This isn't accurate, since there could be pre-prime years, out-of-form years, years of injury or in a solitary case - Pete Sampras - declined years. The concept of 'good years' (which I often use) gives a better picture. But I am not going to give that here as it would lead to dogfights. So, considering slam winning span, the stats are given below:

Player	Slam winning career span	Number of slams played before turning 27	Number of slams won before turning 27	Percentage of slams won before turning 27	Number of slams played after turning 27	Number of slams won after turning 27	Percentage of slams won after turning 27
Connors	1974-1983	15	5	33.33%	12	3	25%
Lendl	1984-1990	11	4	36.36%	14	4	28.57%
Becker	1985-1991	35	5	14.29%	6	1	16.67%
Agassi	1992-2003	16	3	18.75%	24	5	20.83%
Sampras	1990-2002	33	11	33.33%	15	3	20%
Federer	2003-2018	23	12	52.17%	37	8	21.62%
Nadal	2005-2024	29	11	37.93%	30	11	36.67%
Djokovic	2008-2023	26	6	23.08%	34	18	52.94%

Looking at the table above, it must be clear that there is no definite proof that 27 causes ageing or decline. Although there are more players who won a greater percentage of slams before reaching the age in discussion, the only player for whom the difference turns out to be gargantuan is none other than our Swiss maestro. And it is virtually the opposite for Djokovic. For all other players, the difference is not to the point where we can draw immediate conclusions. And look at Nadal's numbers - they are virtually identical on each half of the table. Of course, the numbers above are a massive oversimplification as the discussed ATGs were not all 'good' in all the slams.

Bottomline: It is not AGE that matters, it is STAGE.

I'm glad this topic excites you, but I didn't mean to suggest that the age of 27 is particularly significant in itself; I merely took that age because of John Barrett's comment. I know that Borg retired under that age, so he obviously couldn't have won any slams beyond that. And I'm fully aware that every player has a different career trajectory, with different strengths and weaknesses. However, I decided just to list those 12 ATGs with the number of slams they won aged 27+. The point of my post was simply to show in numbers the significant change in what is considered "old" in tennis that has occurred in the last 20 years. Borg's early retirement is actually indicative of how differently people thought about age at that time.

By the way, I can see a couple of errors in your table: Becker won his last slam in 1996 (when he was 28), not 1991, and Nadal hasn't won any slams since 2022.

 

it is very different for different players and for different opponents. e.g. if we take fed. he was too old for rafa and muzza in his own era 04-06 but was in his prime vs nole then. then he got too old for nole but in his prime vs rafa and muzza from 2011 onwards.

 

Tennis was becoming a 100m race and sprinters don't win much past 28 too.

Until racquet and strings' technology changed and latter they slowed down the courts because it was becoming unwatchable. Tennis was a sequence of 3 or 4 explosive movements every damn point, starting with the serve followed with the quickest burst so you could to get the closest to the net as fast as possible before the split step to another quick thinking and executing a volley. All of this with heavy racquets with small heads. The returner also needed to be closer to the baseline to take away time so the server couldn't 'close the net' properly. That means he'd need to return a big serve at a good % of its peak and rotation with a bad stick while also being forced to deliver it at the feet of the server. That demanded a great reaction time, great visual acuity/hand-eye coordination. On this dynamic being 10cm inside the serve box or outside the serve box at the moment of your split step made a gigantic difference and it defined tennis before the late 90's.

Clay was the only watchable surface if there was one S&V-er in the match. Ironically I hate it today and love grass. S&V and C&C were Un-fucking-watchable. Don't believe in anyone that says otherwise and its nostalgic about the good old'days. The good old days in tennis, if it ever existed, were probably in the 50's or 60's

Tennis' still a 'violent' sport but today losing 0,025 in reaction time wont turn you from top1 to top20 and thus stop you from winning slams.

btw, old people consider mcenroe vs. lendll RG final a great match from the past and some years ago I decided to watch it and its unbearable. But I forced myself to watch it even tho McEnroe couldn't play tennis. Even on clay he'd S&V and chip and charge almost every point. Disgusting. I challenge the nostalgic people to watch or rewatch this crap:

 

At age 31+ a player should realistically be looking for his last hurrah, if he's still regularly winning slams then something is wrong with the era.

If a player is still slogging away and winning multiple slams at 34+ then something is tremendously wrong with the era.

 

Asterisked eras:

All the eras before Tilden
Tilden era
Rosewall/Laver era
Fedalovic era

 

Gonna have to disappoint you old heads, but athletes today take far better care of themselves than ever before. It's not a surprise we're seeing slower degradation of athleticism. The only reason numbers don't look even more crooked is due to injuries accumulated by athletes explosiveness surpassing their own bodies.

 

Djokovic: 18

What a joke lmao.

 

If 27+ y.o. Djokovic had lost half of his slam wins vs Fedal, Federer would've won 11 Nadal 13, Djokovic 13.

 

80 to 90% of players decline markedly at around 30 or shortly thereafter. Don't let yourself be fooled by the longevity of Fedalovic.

 

Not necessarily true nowadays.
If I look below the 1st tier of players today, I can see at least 2 examples of players in their 30s who're doing either as good as in their 20s or doing better than in their 20s.
Dimitrov is now playing his best tennis since 2017, he has scored his best result in multiple Big Tournaments in the last year and a half, including 2 Masters finals. Now he's back in the top 10.
Now let's look at a player in a lower tier, Struff. In the last year and a half he has broken some barriers in his resume - he reached multiple finals in 2023, including a Masters final in Madrid in which he took the defending champion Alcaraz to a deciding set. This year he won his maiden ATP title in Munich. While he did better in Slams between 2020-2022, even then he was older than 27 years old.
There are many players who play at their best or near their best nowadays, even outside the Big 3.

 

Old is gold

 

Mmm, old gold. 🤤

 

Depends on the player. Federer was old at 26. Actually 25.5 when he lost twice to Canas.

 

Federer won an entire Career Super Slam (all 4 Slams+YEC) between 2008 and 2010 after he already celebrated his 27th birthday, so he definitely wasn't old at 26.

 

30-32 is the range we are looking at.

We should not forget these players start extremely early and 15 years of pro tennis will have an effect independent frommthe increased physical conditioning and modern medicine.

Big 3 are just exceptionally gifted. Don‘t take them as a reference.

Someone reliant on speed like Carlos or reliant on endless defense like Zverev/Medvedev is doomed to decline at 30 already.