re: Is tennis the most unforgiving sport if you're 3rd or 4th best?

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It only really feels this way because of the shear dominance of Federer, Nadal, and Djok. Before them, this wasn't how it was and once Nole is gone, it will likely go back to there being far more parity, especially with Alcaraz already having some injuries.

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There have been periods where there this wasn't how it was, but mostly it is how it is.

The first half of the 70s there wasn't as much clear dominance, but the second half of the 70s was basically Connors, Borg, and Vilas.

In the 80s it was basically Mcenroe, Connors, Lendl, Becker, and Edberg.

In the 90s, it was basically Sampras, Agassi, and then the best clay court player would win the french (Muster, Bruguera, Kuerten).

Early aughts was a bit of a power void with Hewitt, Roddick, late-stage-Agassi, and Safin all being in the mix.

Then Fedsmug filled that void and vultured the tf out of those stragglers, including now-geriatric-Agassi, until Nadal finally fully completed puberty and started kicking Fed's arse, with them winning basically everything until Novak really REALLY broke through in late 2010 and 2011.

Fromthen basically until just recently it was Novak, Rafa, Murray, Fed, and Stanimal, with the only real exceptions being Del Potro (who, to be fair, was briefly the best hardcourt player in the world and whose career would have played out very differently absent his signifcant wrist issues) and Cilic, who I would say was the only real outlier (even though he was obviously a top-level player).