When trying to understand why men’s tennis increasingly resembles the two-tier Premier League, perhaps we need to shift the focus of our blame.

Typically, it has been the “Next Gen” group of youngsters who have been taken to task over the unchallenged dominance of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. The early exits at this year’s Wimbledon of Stefanos Tsitsipas, 20, and Alexander Zverev, 22, only added to the frustration at these much-hyped whippersnappers failing to deliver.

But for early twentysomethings such as Tsitsipas and Zverev to win a grand slam, they are realistically going to have to beat two, possibly even three, of the greatest players of all time. That is an awful lot of pressure to be putting on players who are barely out of adolescence.

The challenge to the “Big Three” should really be coming from those in the mid-twenties to early-thirties age bracket. Sadly though, this demographic might best be dubbed tennis’s “Lost Gen” of players.

Which brings us to the Wimbledon quarter-finals, where the five pretenders hoping to end the Big Three’s run of winning the past 10 grand slams are all aged between 28 and 31. They are a motley bunch of Sam Querrey, Guido Pella, Roberto Bautista Agut, David Goffin and Kei Nishikori. Between them, they boast a sole grand-slam final and, in Nishikori’s case, are a symbol of failed promise and missed opportunity.