The Big Four in tennis has once again claimed the top four positions in the Association of Tennis Professionals, or ATP world rankings. However, there are signs that the dominance of once unmovable Big Four is coming to an end. Rafael Nadal thinks so too. The 14-time grand slam champion recently murmured that the era of him, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Andy Murray may soon be over in next to no time.

Nadal is currently competing at the 2015 BNP Paribas Open Indian Wells Masters. It is his first tournament after claiming his 65th ATP title at Buenos Aires on March 1. Ahead of his opening match at Indian Wells, Nadal faced the media and talked about how the Big Four has managed to take over men’s game for a long time.

According to Nadal, it was “amazing” how the same players win almost every tournament. He believes that the sporting world of tennis has never seen anything like it before.

“Novak, Andy, Roger, myself - it's something special and it’s finishing,” Nadal chimed in. “I don’t know if (it will happen) in one, two, three, four years, but for everybody it finishes, hopefully we created a good example for the next generations.”

For many years, the Big Four has completely dominated men’s game winning major and even minor tournaments. In the grand slam tournaments result alone, all four of them had won a collective 41 titles. Of the Big Four, Federer leads their grand slam record with 17 followed by Nadal with 14. Djokovic and Murray has 8 and two, respectively.

Since 2009, Swiss tennis star Stan Wawrinka became the first player to break the Big Four’s grand slam streak after beating Nadal in the finale of the 2014 Australain Open. Croatian tennis player Marin Cilic is also one of the promising tennis athletes to win a grand slam outside the Big Four. Cilic claimed his first grand slam title at the 2014 US Open after beating Japanese No. 1 Kei Nishikori. Then there are other rising tennis stars such as Canada’s Milos Raonic and Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov. Is the Big Four’s decade-long domination really over?

Nadal will aim to win his fourth Indian Wellls Masters title this year. He will begin his campaign in his opening second round match against the winner of Igor Sijsling and Filip Krajinovic.

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