Anyone Else Watching the French Open Tennis Finals Live - Nadal vs Djokovic?

Nadal would almost certainly have more major titles by now - this record seventh French Open crown took his total to 11 - if not for Federer and Djokovic.

Without those two stones in his shoes, Nadal could have ruled alone at the top of tennis for years. But would tennis fans have cared as much about the men's game as they do now? No. And would Nadal have become such a good player if first Federer and now Djokovic hadn't forced him to improve? Probably not.

"To just watch these top players push each other, I don't think there's any much further to push,'' Steffi Graf, a 22-time major winner on the women's side, said before this latest momentous chapter in the Djokovic-Nadal-Federer rivalry. "Men's tennis, definitely, is at the highest it has ever been.''

Like musketeers, they're even more glorious as a trio. By building this golden era of tennis together, they share in its glitter. It may sometimes seem like a curse for Toni Nadal, but it is precisely because his nephew is tested so often against opponents of such high quality that we can be absolutely sure of his and their greatness.

To beat each other, they have to lift their game to the highest of standards. All three have been made bigger and stronger by their rivalry, not diminished by it. They are each other's poison, but also each other's magic potion that makes them look good. Together, they have now won 28 of the last 29 majors.

So, in men's tennis, it is them on one plane, everyone else on another, and looks likely to stay that way for the immediate future, at least for Nadal and Djokovic. Both in their mid-twenties, they have more time than Federer, 30, to make even more of a mark.

"They are doing something to one another that hasn't been done before,'' said three-time French Open champion Mats Wilander. "Borg made (John) McEnroe a better player, but Borg quit. And Federer made Nadal a better player, and Federer didn't quit. And Djokovic has beaten the hell out of Nadal, and Nadal didn't quit. So I think they're a very special three players that are not afraid of one another. They're not mentally really disturbed by one another. They just tactically, technically can't handle the other guy. It's very interesting.''

Had he won his first French Open final, Djokovic would have become the first player since Rod Laver in 1969 to hold four majors at the same time.

But Nadal, for his mental health, needed this victory more. Another loss in a major final to the world's No. 1 would have been the fourth in a row for Nadal, an unprecedented Grand Slam of losses that would have done untold damage to the Spaniard's confidence.