Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have been eliminated from the French Open. Their influence on tennis continues

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PARIS – Carlos Alcaraz could not reach the starting line of the 2026 French Open, felled by a wrist injury.

Jannik Sinner succumbed to ill health and baking heat in the second round.

But the two best players in men’s tennis, who have been redefining the conditions for genius despite their youth, live on through their tennis children. When they’re not there, it’s much easier to see what they’ve accomplished.

There’s João Fonseca, 19, the kid from Brazil who showed Novak Djokovic, the 39-year-old GOAT, that he can hit the ball one moment and caress it the next. There’s Rafael Jódar, the same age as Fonseca, who leaps over the baseline to launch a two-handed backhand return into the air with Sinner’s leap and rush to the front of the court with the fearlessness of Alcaraz.

And there, two years younger, is Alcaraz and Sinner’s most direct descendant yet. Moïse Kouame, the 17-year-old Frenchman. Witness the compact, stretchy forehand and the closed-wrist backhand, with a follow-through that seems to penetrate the crowd. See the movement and power from the sharpest corners of the field. See the ability to turn defense into attack and make neutral look dangerous. See the drop shot.

And maybe: look to the future. Their playing styles are their own, but this trio spearheading the next generation of men’s tennis suddenly coming to the sport is also a collective of Sinnercaraz descendants. They play fast and fearlessly, just like the young but slightly lesser stars who created the blueprint they follow.

“My role model in tennis when I was younger was Rafael Nadal,” Spaniard Jódar said at a news conference after prevailing in five sets on Friday over another young player, 21-year-old American Alex Michelsen.

“In the last few years before I turned pro, I could probably say Carlos Alcaraz.”

That’s how it is for many newbies. They decorated the walls of their bedrooms with posters of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Djokovic – although Kouame said he was more of a Petra Kvitová guy.

When tennis got serious for them and they came within striking distance of the top of the tour, they looked to the way Sinner and Alcaraz staged a rapid takeover of tennis.

In most areas, the difference between the way a 25 or 27 year old and a 21 year old learned their trade is bridgeable, something that can be explained retroactively with some insight. In men’s tennis, the difference has grown in recent years into a gap that players who were on the court with the Big Three, rather than watching them on TV, have so far been unable to bridge.

Félix Auger-Aliassime, 25, and Casper Ruud, 27, have spoken about how the sport has changed them in the middle of their careers. They grew up trying to master the calculus of Federer-Nadal-Djokovic point construction. That meant the art of tennis chess, where you hit six or eight shots to make the shot that completes the point.

It saw them rise to the highest level of the sport. There was some disruption, as Alexander Zverev (29) and Daniil Medvedev (30) introduced a mix of irredeemable service and basic agility that briefly forced even the Big Three to patch their software. But it usually worked.

Then came Sinner and Alcaraz. Sinner with his changes of direction that turned neutral rallies into traps. Alcaraz with his sweeping north-south movement and crushing courage. Both with basic strokes that they have refined to detonate the ball when dictating and deflect it when defending. And both with the ability and desire to defend and scramble, and the hunger to attack at the first opportunity without letting a perfect ball be the enemy of the good.

“The defense has not become just defense either,” Auger-Aliassime said in a recent interview. “You’re playing against Carlos and Jannik and you come to the net and if you don’t approach really well, they can hit a passing shot that you can’t really play on. The speed is so much faster. You have to be so much more precise with that speed to put the opponent in a difficult position.”

Fonseca, Jódar and Kouame have plenty of company at different stages of their development. On Wednesday afternoon, Jakub Menšík, 20, writhed on the clay, paralyzed by full-body cramps and dehydration at the end of a five-set win over Argentina’s Mariano Navone in the scorching heat of Paris.

On Friday he returned, slowly at first and then all at once, to beat Alex de Minaur, the 27-year-old Energizer bunny who seemed like a heavy favorite given what Menšík had been through and De Minaur’s experience.

Pupil Tien, 20, saved match points and came back from a set down in his second round match. The efforts in the Paris heat seemed to exhaust him and contributed to a lackluster performance against Italy’s Flavio Cobolli, who defeated him in three sets.

His friend Alex Michelsen, 21, had the misfortune to encounter Jódar. At least he went to one of his own. Spain has another young player besides Jódar, Martín Landaluce, 20, who recorded two five-set wins in the first week and fell two points short of winning a third.

After losing in a third consecutive marathon on Sunday, Landaluce said in a mixed zone that he knew he could hold his own with the players he wants to surpass. That is a common thread among this group.

“All the young guys coming up want to prove themselves,” Tien said at a press conference after his second-round victory.

“I think a lot of the guys coming up have a lot of belief in themselves that they belong at this level, and that they can challenge the top guys at these events. I think just believing is a huge first step, and I think a lot of these younger guys, including myself, are just really eager to go out there and prove themselves.”

This is how Michelsen assessed the situation.

“It seems like they’re all capable of doing pretty much anything on the tennis court,” he said during an interview.

“They don’t have many weaknesses. They move great and serve well. Both wings are good, and that description fits a lot of people like Jódar, Menšík, Fonseca and Learner. Our whole group is very well composed and we had the privilege of seeing the greats grow up and realize what we have to do to become a professional tennis player.”

Rafael Jódar has risen from outside the top 700 to the top 40 in one year. (Miguel Reis/Getty Images)

Their artillery is a proof of concept.

Fonseca’s topspin forehand averages more than 3,000 revolutions per minute (RPM). He reaches speeds of 80 mph, 5 mph faster and nearly 200 RPM more than the average tour player, according to Courtside Advantage, which tracks the speed and placement of every shot on the ATP Tour.

Jódar’s topspin forehand averages 130 km/h and 3,150 RPM. All that spin allows them to hunt for opportunities to exploit their power, putting opponents on their heels and kicking back deep behind the pitch.

Their backhands are also harder and they clear the net on a lower trajectory than the tour average. This can create the feeling that the ball is coming to the opponent even faster. Sometimes all they need to do is see a ball bouncing a little higher than the top of the net because that gives them a chance to hit the ball even if they are a few feet behind the baseline.

Jódar said that although he modeled his game after Alcaraz’s, he has tried to make it his own.

“I’m an aggressive player who likes to dominate the points, but I think you have to defend a little more here on clay. So I’m trying to develop that game too,” Jódar said at a press conference after the victory over Michelsen. “I am now trying to develop all my weak points, such as the forehand, the serve, the return. I think these are things that I still need to develop.”

Fonseca gave himself a similar review after his win over Djokovic. He lost two sets, an insurmountable lead for Djokovic, but for the umpteenth time in his career. But then he evolved into something like the apotheosis of a next-generation player. In the fifth set, he put his feet down and hit the ball into wide open spaces, and Djokovic could only watch them zoom past.

Fonseca struck hard, but not too close to the line.

“Aggressive with margin,” he said at a news conference. “I have become a bit stronger and have scored a few more points.”

More aggressiveness. More consistency. More control, especially on the first shot after his serve, the all-important “plus-one” shot, even if perhaps the best returner in the history of the sport is the one returning.

As the match stretched into the fourth hour, Fonseca had the other advantage that youth often brings: young legs with more gas in the tank. He felt Djokovic was tiring.

“That gave me more hope to keep finding the solutions,” Fonseca said.

Find them, he did. He will now get another chance to turn future promise into success on Sunday, when he takes on Ruud. Jódar will face 34-year-old Pablo Carreño Busta. Menšík plays Andrey Rublev, also a generation of Ruud.

Three battles between tennis generations, where the young people are growing up faster and faster.