21 things that happened the last time Roger Federer missed a Grand Slam
Roger Federer announced he wouldn't play in next week's French Open, snapping his record streak of 65 consecutive Grand Slams played. The last time there was a tennis major without Federer: The 1999 U.S. Open. Federer missed out on the tournament after losing in qualifying. Here's what was happening back then.
1. Pete Sampras was ranked No. 1 in the ATP. Other men's rankings: Andre Agassi (No. 2), Tim Henman (No. 5), Jim Courier (No. 36), Michael Chang (No. 62), Boris Becker (No. 110), James Blake (No. 333), David Nalbandian (No. 533), Ivo Karlovic (No. 748), Mikhail Youzhny (No. 792), Nikolay Davydenko (No. 888) and MaliVai Washington (No. 1,090). On the women's side: Martina Hingis (No. 1), Venus Williams (No. 2), Jennifer Capriati (No. 4), Monica Seles (No. 6), Serena Williams (No. 7), Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario (No. 8) and Anna Kournikova (No. 9).
2. Steffi Graf had retired two weeks earlier.
(Jeff Christensen)
3. The United States had three players in the top 10. Today, the highest-ranked American is No. 17. Surprisingly though, there were only three more Americans in the top 100 back in 1999 as there are now.
4. Serena Williams won her first Grand Slam at that U.S. Open (surprisingly getting one before older sister Venus) - the first of 28 majors for the sisters, for now.
5. You were worried about Y2K. Don't lie - you were.
(Michael Okoniewski/Newsmakers)
6. Kurt Warner had yet to start an NFL game.
7. Dan Marino and Warren Moon were still in the NFL. Moon began his professional football career in 1978.
Marino lost his final game, 62-7. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)
8. The Sixth Sense was the No. 1 movie in America. The Blair Witch Project was still in theaters, as were The Matrix, American Pie, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Eyes Wide Shut and Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.
9. Christina Aguilera's Genie In a Bottle was the top song, while ...Baby One More Time, Livin' La Vida Loca and Cher's Believe were still charting. The ubiqutious Smooth, the Santana and Rob Thomas atrocity, still hadn't hit No. 1, where it would stay for 12 weeks.
10. Millennium by the Backstreet Boys was the top album, led by the hit single I Want It The Way.
11. Dr. Dre had yet to release his follow up to The Chronic.
12. Prince's 1999 still had four more months of relevance.
13. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were in the midst of their second-straight 60-home run seasons.
14. A 17-year-old Britney Spears performed at U.S. Open Kid's Day.
(Photo by Ron Galella/WireImage)
15. Kim Clijsters, who's retired twice in the interim, had just started her Grand Slam career at Wimbledon.
16. Nobody had heard of MySpace, Facebook or iPods and nobody was really texting, let alone Snapchatting or whatever it is the kids do these days. Napster was probably the most important thing in tech. You also were still probably using Yahoo! or Lycos or Alta Vista or asking Jeeves to search the Internet. If you were Googling, here's how it looked:
17. Sega Dreamcast, Playstation 2 and Nintendo GameCube hadn't been released.
18. Here's what Rafael Nadal and Richard Gasquet were doing:
19. Freaks and Geeks was enjoying its lone year on television, ranked No. 107 for the year, behind Who Wants To Be A Millionaire; ER; Friends; Frasier; NYPD Blue; JAG; Walker, Texas Ranger; Beverly Hills 90210, Boy Meets World and ahead of 7th Heaven, Party of Five, Family Guy and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
20. Taylor Fritz, the American who is currently the highest-ranked 18-year-old in the world (No. 72), was one year old.
(Clive Brunskill /Allsport)
21. Swiss player Miroslava Vavrinec was ranked No. 89 in the world. The next year, Miroslava, nicknamed "Mirka," would meet Federer at the Sydney Olympics. They would be married nine years later and now have four kids. Mirka also started a Grand Slam streak at the 2000 Australian Open. It would last eight Slams, or 57 fewer than her future husband.
