​​As 2022 winds down, Sports Illustrated is looking back at the themes and teams, story lines and through lines that shaped the year.

In a sport with no clock, nothing in tennis ends with predictability, or on a reliable timetable. Thus, it’s fitting that the end of the sport’s Great Generation is something more akin to continents drifting apart than a Big Bang or a scoreboard showing no time remaining.

The year 2022 started with four active players in the sport, incredibly, brandishing 20 or more major titles. It ended with two. Roger Federer and Serena Williams, now both age 41, announced their retirements, unequivocally in his case, kindasorta in hers. But the two remaining titans—Rafael Nadal, 36, and Novak Djokovic, 35—combined to win three of the year's four majors; and Djokovic closed the season playing perhaps as well as ever. So, it’s the end of era. Except not really.

Then again, awkward, arrhythmic transition was a seam that ran through the entire tennis season.

In conventional years, tennis sheds its niche status at the Australian Open, breaking through to a larger audience. But in 2022, the pre-tournament drama outstripped the attention (and tension) of most matches. Given assurances that he would be admitted into the country despite his choice to forego a Covid vaccination, Novak Djokovic, the event’s nine-time champ, was detained upon arrival in Australia. His status became an international cause celebre, became the source of a countless hot takes, and became— to mix sports metaphors—a political football. And on the eve of the tournament, Djokovic was deported.

Suddenly resurgent, Rafael Nadal used the opportunity to win the title, the 21st major of his career, breaking a three-way tie and vaulting him past Djokovic and Federer on the all-time list. The women’s title, meanwhile, went to Australia’s Ash Barty, the first homegrown player to win in nearly a half-century. Her status atop the sport cemented, she celebrated by….retiring a few weeks later.

Just when tennis seemed to be reeling with unreliability, Poland’s Iga Swiatek, became the new No.1, made the most of her battlefield promotion, winning 37 straight matches, including the requisite seven at the French Open. And Nadal performed his annual rite of spring and won at Roland Garros for, comically, the 14th time. For the first time in his career, he won the first two legs of the Grand Slam.

Ah, stability.

And the tennis gods laughed.

In response to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Wimbledon bowed to governmental pressure and unilaterally banned Russian players. The tours responded by stripping the event of ranking points and suing the tournament. Djokovic won the men’s title for the seventh time (perspective: one fewer than Federer), drawing within a major of Nadal, 22-21. And, because no sport does self-owning as elaborately as tennis does, Elena Rybakina, a Russian-born, Russian-residing powerhouse, competing under the Kazakh flag, took the women’s trophy.

Before the tournament, Serena Williams announced that the 2022 U.S. Open would mark the final event of her unrivaled career. The first week of the tournament felt like a rightfully-deserved extended tribute to her with a tennis event tacked on. In the second week, time doubled back and halved itself, and the event was hijacked by a 19-year-old Spaniard, Carlos Alcaraz, who won the first major (likely of many) of his career and ascended to No.1 in the rankings.

Yet, the year’s most memorable single moment, occurred not at a major but at a team event. Federer announced that the Laver Cup, which he’d created, would mark the sunset of his career. Visibly compromised by his lingering knee injury, he played doubles alongside Nadal in his final match.

Afterwards: a poignant, bittersweet retirement ceremony, during which, unforgettably, Federer and Nadal, sitting together and leaking tears, held hands.

It was almost imperceptible. In fact, neither claim to even remember until the gesture was called to their attention. Yet it encapsulated so much. This shared sense of sports mortality, maybe real mortality. This mutual appreciation for a rivalry that may have been a see-saw, but, finally, elevated both of them. They shared an acknowledgement of finality, their sports mortality laid bare.

Then, later that weekend, in a breathtaking decisive match at Laver Cup, Frances Tiafoe, an expressive American beat the contemplative Greek player, Stefanos Tsitsipas. And this may have well have been the ultimate metaphor for the entire sport, during this period of change. Time wins. Time is undefeated. Time waits for no one. But there are, waiting in abundance, are other players and other storylines. —Jon Wertheim

Novak Djokovic vs. the Majors: How Did We Get Here? By Chris Almeida and Jon Wertheim

Rafael Nadal Is Happy to Wear the Crown By Jon Wertheim

‘Pickleball Is the Wild, Wild West’: Inside the Fight Over the Fastest-Growing Sport in America By John Walters

Serena Williams Changed Sports Forever By Jon Wertheim

Steffi Graf Is Still Too Famous for Steffi Graf By Jon Wertheim

Tennis’s Most Dynamic Player Is Also Its Most Difficult By Jon Wertheim

Carlos Alcaraz Arrives Ahead of Schedule As the World’s Best By Chris Almeida and Jon Wertheim

Roger Federer Leaves Behind Distinct, Beautiful Mark on Tennis By Jon Wertheim