They all go. As has been said a thousand times in tennis, the lone match no one will win comes when they are standing across the net from Father Time.
In a recent article for The Ringer, writer Tumaini Carayol ponders the question of the past five years, still ongoing: "What happens when the legends finally retire?" This is the question that players and coaches, tournament heads and TV programmers, casual fans and die-hards alike are grappling with.
The piece poses questions and offers up data points about how the ATP and WTA tours, respectively, have known feast and relative famine. They've floated and fallen.