The history of tennis has plenty of examples of guys dominating their peers. This gave Federer, or anyone else around 5-7 years to dominate. When he got to 28 years old there were two greats coming up that partially because of the age difference were able to knock him off his perch around 30. This has been a constant for decades.

Now Nadal and Djokovic come around and one dominates everything on clay, the other everything else, but it’s not ending after 5-7 years. It’s now been going for 10 years, and doesn’t appear to be ending anytime soon. The number 3 player in the world, their biggest competition, is 38! Imagine the number of majors Federer would be at if Djokovic and Nadal were 4 years younger, he would likely be at 25-30 due to having 4 more years of no competition. However, that’s not normal, what is normal is to have younger players end your run.