NEW YORK – Let’s start with the remarkable photograph above to remind ourselves what we are dealing with.

Novak Djokovic is close to 40 years old, competing against players like Carlos Alcaraz, who was not born when he turned professional. And yet the Serbian, with flecks of gray in his hedgehog hair, is still able to take flight and contort himself into ball-striking positions that would leave most of his actual peers in need of physical therapy.

He is a marvel and an outlier among outliers, the most successful men’s tennis champion of the Open era and forever on the short list of the greatest players of all time. But he is not going to win any more major singles titles, as this season has made abundantly clear.

Friday provided the latest evidence as he ran out of steam and solutions against Alcaraz, falling in straight sets in the semifinals of the US Open, which remains the last place where Djokovic won a Grand Slam title.

That was in 2023, a year when he took three of the four majors, only losing in five sets to Alcaraz in a thriller at Wimbledon.

But since that season, Djokovic has won just two titles: the Olympic gold in Paris and an ATP 250 in Geneva, bringing his career total in singles to a nice round 100. The desire to conquer may still be there, but the total commitment is not. He is playing a limited schedule, and it is difficult to see him changing that with a young family and a body in constant need of care and repair. Even with total commitment, the power dynamic has shifted for good. Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner now rule.

“They’re just too good, you know, playing on a really high level,” Djokovic said after Alcaraz’s 6-4, 7-6 (4), 6-2 victory on Friday. “Unfortunately, I ran out of gas after the second set. I think I had enough energy to battle him and to keep up with his rhythm for two sets. After that I was gassed out, and he kept going. That's kind of what I felt this year also with Jannik. Yeah, best-of-five makes it very, very difficult for me to play them. Particularly if it’s like the end stages of the Grand Slam.”

Djokovic, who said he intends to play on, has often looked down and out in big matches during his career, only to revive and find a way: see the classic 2012 Australian Open marathon versus Rafael Nadal.

But appearances were not deceiving on Friday as he gasped for breath between rallies and leaned on the towel box, his features drawn and his signature returns off target when he needed them most. He has hit many a brilliant shot on the full stretch over the last 20 years, shoes squeaking as he transformed defense to offense out of a near split. But he was late to the ball and the target too often on Friday, particularly on his forehand wing.

“Of course, it's frustrating on the court when you are not able to keep up with that level physically, but at the same time, it's something also expected, I guess,” Djokovic said. “It comes with time and with age.”

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He is still, at 38, the third best men’s player in the world. The rankings don’t reflect it – he will be No. 4 on Monday -- but his major tournament results certainly do. And though 2025 will hardly go down as his annus optimus it is a remarkable achievement to reach the semifinals in all four Grand Slam events at this late stage of the game.

“Impressive,” Alcaraz said of Djokovic after his 6-4, 7-6 (4), 6-2 victory. “Challenging the Next Gen, challenging us, the way he’s doing it is impressive. I tell him always he looks like 25 years old physically.”

What is missing is the 25-year-old’s staying power. And yet the only other players to reach the final four in all majors this season are Sinner, who is No. 1 and about to face Alcaraz for the US Open men’s title, and Aryna Sabalenka, who is No. 1 and just defeated Amanda Anisimova for the women’s title.

There is of course another way to look at Djokovic’s continued success as a part-timer. It shows how steep the dropoff is after Sinner and Alcaraz. For me it is more about their brilliance — and Djokovic’s skill and drive — than their pursuers’ mediocrity. Their rise has been demoralizing to establishment figures who expected their turn to come after the Big Three: see Daniil Medvedev, Alexander Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas et al.

Sinner’s and Alcaraz’s consolidation of power has to be daunting to their own generation who know how much they will have to lift to join the conversation, how much they will have to stretch and strain to maximize their own talent (let’s all send good vibes to Ben Shelton’s left shoulder).

Sinner and Alcaraz are the total packages, capable of imposing a torrid pace that the pack, for now, cannot follow.

Sinner is relentless; Alcaraz less reliably on task. But they both possess a top gear that only the other can match, and this will be the eighth straight major where one of them will walk away as the champion.

The Big Three raised the bar on longevity, no doubt, but in traditional tennis terms, this is already an era. Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe played all their Grand Slam finals against each other over two years: 1980 and 1981. Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg played all of theirs over three: 1988, 1989 and 1990.

At this stage, it is hard to imagine that Alcaraz, age 22, and Sinner, age 24, will not extend their rivalry over a considerably longer span.

But injury and ennui can spring surprises, so it is best to relish what we have while we have it: a third straight Grand Slam final between sparkling talents who can do damage from just about anywhere and who have shown a welcome propensity for bringing out the best in each other.

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Their rivalry already has quantity and quality. This will be their 15th tour-level meeting: one more than Borg and McEnroe.

Of those 15 matches, seven, in my view, have been genuinely special with the 2022 US Open quarterfinal and 2025 French Open final the standouts.

Both went five sets and over five hours, and Alcaraz won them both after facing match point: he saved one in New York and three in Paris.

Alcaraz holds a 9-5 edge over his elder and has won six of their last seven matches, including last month’s anticlimactic final in Cincinnati when Sinner, ill and suffering in the heat, tapped out before the end of the first set.

He, not Alcaraz, remains the hardcourt master until proven otherwise: winning the last two Australian Opens and last year’s US Open. His short-hop timing from the baseline is unmatched, and he has improved his explosive moment and endurance. He is not as balletic and obviously acrobatic as Alcaraz, but he can get so low at 6-foot-3 and create so much racket-head speed with his whipping groundstrokes.

In real time, his forehand looks flat but slow it down on a replay and you can see how much topspin he is generating to go with the pace. That explains the late dip as his shots near their target: a dip that so often surprises the opposition.

But Alcaraz gets my nod this time.

Unlike Sinner, he has not dropped a set coming into the final: a first for him at a major. He looks fresher physically and is perhaps healthier considering that Sinner needed treatment off court on Friday for a possible abdominal strain during his surprisingly rugged four-set semifinal victory over an inspired Felix Auger-Aliassime.

Sinner has been broken four times in the tournament; Alcaraz just twice, and the Spaniard seems now to have fully assimilated the changes to his serving motion. He has won 84 percent of his first-serve points here, putting 63 percent in play. Sinner, typically the better server, is at 82 percent and 57 percent.

Fine margins to be sure, and Sinner has been the more devastating force when returning, particularly against second serves, winning 65 percent of the points to Alcaraz’s 56.

If Sinner is fit, it should again be close, very close, and there is more at stake than a US Open title. The winner will be No. 1 come Monday. Whoever rules, spare a thought, or something more expansive, for the former king, who spent a record 428 weeks in the top spot before time and the new wave of tennis geniuses caught him from behind.

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