Who were the Last Three Men to Win Roland Garros and Wimbledon Back-to-Back?
Alexander Zverev stood on a practice court in Paris during the first week of Roland Garros 2026, digesting the same news as the rest of us: Jannik Sinner, the overwhelming odds-on favourite, had been dumped out in the third round by unheralded Argentinian Juan Manuel Cerundolo. Novak Djokovic promptly followed him out of the tournament after losing to teenage prodigy Joao Fonseca, while defending champion Carlos Alcaraz didn’t even make it to the City of Lights. Suddenly, the most loaded opportunity of the German’s career to finally win a Grand Slam was sitting there, unmistakable, in broad daylight.
Zverev had three lost Grand Slam finals’ worth of weight in his arm to deal with before he could even think of making good on his opportunity. The Big Apple 2020. Paris 2024. Melbourne 2025. Three times on the doorstep. Three times, the door slammed shut.
Now, at his fourth major final and with the draw wide open, Zverev finally got the job done, downing upstart Italian sensation Flavio Cobolli in a thriller. But with the monkey finally off his back, could the German now carry that newfound momentum all the way to Wimbledon glory? Here are the last three men to do exactly that.
Rafael Nadal — 2010
Nobody talks enough about what the twelve months before 2010 cost Rafael Nadal. Four consecutive Roland Garros titles, a handful of sets dropped across the entire run — and then Robin Söderling, fourth round, 2009, and the whole thing collapsed. Roger Federer won the title and completed his career Grand Slam on the court that had belonged to Rafa. Knee tendinitis kept him from Wimbledon entirely that year, and he was forced to watch on from a distance as the sport reorganised itself around his absence.
He arrived back at Roland Garros in 2010 as the second seed, behind Federer, with Söderling seeded fifth and very much in the draw. What he produced was something beyond tennis. He didn’t drop a set — only the second time he’d managed that at Roland Garros, after 2008 — beating Nicolás Almagro in the quarterfinals and Jürgen Melzer in the semifinals before facing Söderling in the final. The man who had beaten him here twelve months earlier. Nadal won 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 without letting the occasion breathe on him for a moment.
That capacity to walk directly into the thing that has damaged you and dismantle it without visible emotion is not common. And the place that the King of Clay gets that innate ability from is an unusual one: the poker table. Insights from popular online poker site and blog Ignition Australia show that Nadal is also a serious poker player — serious enough that in 2013, he beat one of the world’s top experts, Daniel Negreanu, at a charity game in Prague.
He’s explained the connection himself: “[Like tennis, poker is] a competition. You need to control your emotions, you need to be focused all the time.” The psychological architecture that made him dangerous across a felt table is the same architecture that allowed him to stand across the net from Söderling in a Roland Garros final and feel nothing except the match in front of him.[JB1]
He would then carry that momentum into Wimbledon a month later, arriving as the first seed and carrying a streak of 13 straight wins on the lawns. Tomáš Berdych had dismantled Federer in the quarterfinals — ending his run of seven consecutive Wimbledon finals — then beaten Novak Djokovic 6-3, 7-6, 6-3 in the semifinals. Nadal brushed past Andy Murray 6-4, 7-6, 6-4 in his half, then dismissed Berdych 6-3, 7-5, 6-4 in the final.
His second Wimbledon, his eighth major. He added the US Open six weeks later. Three consecutive Slams in one summer. He’d win Roland Garros fourteen times in total, and reach Wimbledon finals in 2011 and 2019. But the Channel Slam? Never again.
Novak Djokovic — 2021
The thing about Djokovic’s 2021 Roland Garros is that he had never truly won the tournament. His previous Paris victory in 2016 had required the then 13-time champion Nadal’s absence through injury. A second French Open title would make him the first male player in the Open Era to win every major twice, but beating a fully healthy Rafa on his own patch was something that he had never done.
This time around, however, he would. In the semifinals, Djokovic beat Nadal — only his third defeat in 108 French Open matches, his first loss across 14 semifinal appearances — and became the only man to beat him twice at Roland Garros, this one against the fully-fit and firing version. Two days later, two sets down against Tsitsipas in the final, he overturned it entirely: 6-7, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4. His 19th Grand Slam title. He called the two matches among the best he’d ever played.
Wimbledon arrived with the calendar Grand Slam whispers no longer quiet. His 27-0 record at Grand Slam events in 2021 entering the fortnight was unimpeachable. Draper, Anderson, Kudla, Garín, Fucsovics — dispatched. He saved ten break points to beat Shapovalov 7-6, 7-5, 7-5 in the semifinals, then claimed a sixth Wimbledon title against Matteo Berrettini — Italy’s first Grand Slam finalist in 45 years — in four sets. His 20th major. Federer and Nadal’s record equalled.
Carlos Alcaraz — 2024
Carlos Alcaraz arrived at Roland Garros in 2024 with a protective sleeve on his forearm and admitted fears about hitting his forehand at full force, an injury that forced withdrawals from Monte Carlo, Barcelona, and Rome. A first major final on clay against the man who would be trying to win his own first Slam in the very same Paris draw two years later. He beat Sinner in five sets — coming back from two sets to one down — then faced Zverev in the final and won 6-3, 2-6, 5-7, 6-1, 6-2, the last two sets a statement of intent that the middle-set wobble had been an aberration, rather than a warning.
Wimbledon was a different kind of statement entirely. As defending champion — having beaten Djokovic in a five-set final in 2023 — he navigated Lajal, Vukic, Tiafoe, Humbert, and Paul (5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2), beat Medvedev in the semifinals 6-7, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, then faced a Djokovic who had undergone meniscus surgery weeks earlier and somehow reached another final. The scoreline — 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 — didn’t flatter Alcaraz. The seven-time champion never got a foothold. He was 21 years old, and he was the second man in the Open Era to win his first four Grand Slam finals.
[JB1]taken from here
