For many, tennis and the Olympic Games are a strange combination, and that certainly applies to the Paris Games in 2024.
Just over a month after the world’s best tennis players left the red clay of Roland Garros, they’re heading straight back to it at a time of year when they should be hitting the hard-court swing across North America. .
A dozen years ago, in the heyday of the London Olympics, players basically just marched across town, from Wimbledon to the Olympic Village, and then to the All England Club, where the main tournament had just ended, for another tournament . Comfortable. Not so much since then.
In 2016, the big question ahead of the Rio Games was who wanted to travel to South America and risk catching Zika, the mosquito-borne virus that was all the rage in Brazil. In 2021, dealing with COVID restrictions and testing, and playing in empty stadiums in a climate that felt like the surface of the sun, was part of the deal in Tokyo.
Great Britain’s Andy Murray won his second consecutive Olympic gold at the 2016 Olympic Games. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
This year it’s the strange transition from the slowest tennis court (clay) to one of the fastest (the grass of Wimbledon), then back to the slow clay and then to the hard courts of North America for a compressed US Open tune-up walk.
This is heaven for a player like Iga Swiatek, the world number 1 and a clay savant. She’s probably one of the few athletes in any sport who goes to Paris and can basically ride in and pick up her gold medal. She just doesn’t lose at Roland Garros, where she has won the French Open four of the past five years.
It’s complicated for almost everyone.
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Three top Americans, Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda, all passed. Too much time on the road. There’s too much hard court prep work to do ahead of the US Open, the most important Grand Slam of the year for many Americans.
Tiafoe, the child of Sierra Leonean immigrants whose love for his country and representing it runs deep, said it was a tough call, but not so much because of the tennis tournament or the chance to win a medal. He’s a basketball nut and thinks this is the only time LeBron James and Stephen Curry will play together in the Olympics.
“That will be iconic,” said Tiafoe, who is confident he will still be good enough to make the team when the Summer Games take place in Los Angeles in four years.
Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, a two-time defending Australian Open champion, and Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, a three-time Grand Slam finalist, have also taken a pass due to injury concerns.
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“I’m very curious to see how players will play the Olympics and the hard court season,” said Jabeur, who has been dealing with a knee injury all year, which she could aggravate by changing the surface so dramatically. “Honestly, it’s going to be very tough.”
However, anyone who succeeds opens up an opportunity for someone who wouldn’t miss it for the world. Chris Eubanks was sixth on the list of American players eligible for one of the four American spots in singles. When he was called up, he relished the chance to play in a team event, but also to soak up the spirit of the Games.
Clay is its worst substrate.
“I’ll find out,” he said.
The opening ceremony takes place the evening before the start of the tennis tournament. Maybe he should play the next morning.
Japan’s Naomi Osaka lights the Olympic torch during the Tokyo 2020 Games. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t miss that.”
Christian Coleman, the American sprinter, was in Eubanks’ fifth grade. They’ve been buddies ever since. Now they will be Olympians together. Coleman was selected for the U.S. relay team.
“How cool is that?” he said.
Last week the International Tennis Federation, which runs the Olympic tournament, boasted that 22 of the top 30 women and men had committed to participate. That includes Rafael Nadal, who will play doubles with Carlos Alcaraz in what should be one of the most important events of the Games.
Assuming his knee holds up, Novak Djokovic, who underwent meniscus surgery on June 5, will… managed to reach the Wimbledon final will also be there. Despite winning 24 Grand Slam titles, Djokovic has never won an Olympic gold medal in four attempts. It’s the most surprising hole in his resume. He was the man of the Tokyo Games, doing splits with gymnasts in the Olympic Village gym, getting loud and rowdy with other Serbian athletes as they watched events together, and posing for selfies with just about everyone.
Novak Djokovic won an Olympic bronze medal in Beijing in 2008. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Is the glass now almost three-quarters full, or is it more than a quarter empty?
Nearly four decades after returning to the Olympic program after a 64-year hiatus, tennis remains somewhat of an oddity at the Games. It features some of the biggest stars in the sport, but a gold medal isn’t viewed with the same glow as a Grand Slam title, unless you’re someone like Alexander Zverev or Belinda Bencic, gold medalists who haven’t won Grand Slam singles. titles.
Dave Haggerty, the president of the ITF, said the sport’s return to the Olympic Games has been one of the keys to its growth since 1988. Participation has more than doubled to approximately 100 million players. There are now 213 countries with tennis federations, up from 104 in 1988. Of those, 157 participate in the men’s national team event, the Davis Cup, and 138 in the women’s Billie Jean King Cup, up from 51 and fewer than 40 in 1988.
“It’s not a traditional tennis crowd,” Haggerty said. “It’s an opportunity for us to reach a different audience.”
Just as they did when they turned Wimbledon pink in 2012, organizers plan to dress Roland Garros so that it doesn’t simply look like a smaller version of the French Open.
They will have to cover up the Rolex signs since Omega is the Olympic sponsor. There is also no electronic line calling, no prize money and probably most importantly, no ranking points. With no chance to earn ranking points, Denis Shapovalov, the Canadian star trying to work his way back from injury and desperate to get his ranking back to where he can be seeded for major tournaments, said he had little other choice than to skip the Games. .
Venus and Serena Williams have won eight Olympic gold medals between them – and 30 Grand Slam singles titles. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Haggerty said the purity of competing for a medal and nothing else offers its own quadrennial allure. Easy for him to say: he won’t even give up two weeks’ salary to participate. There’s also the appeal of the spectacle of the Olympics and the break it provides from the hamster wheel of the regular tour. Many players would compete on gravel for a week if the opportunity arose to march in the opening ceremony (or in this case, ride a ferry across the Seine) and live and/or socialize for a week among 10,000 of the best athletes. in the world in their chosen activities in the Olympic Village.
“Emma and I already have our plan to exchange pins and travel all over the village,” said Danielle Collins, who will team up with Emma Navarro on the U.S. team. “Total bucket list item for me.”
Coco Gauff wants to win a medal, but also wants to meet Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast ever, and Sha’Carri Richardson, the gold medal favorite in the 100 meters, and wants to join two other American runners, Gabby Thomas and Sydney McLaughlin- Levrone.
It turns out that Daniil Medvedev is also an Olympian. “A very easy decision,” he said, claiming he loved the atmosphere in Tokyo, which was probably the worst atmosphere of the Summer Olympics ever due to all the COVID restrictions. Considering that Medvedev, a Russian who will compete as a neutral athlete due to his country’s invasion of Ukraine, will have time in Paris.
“I know that if I think strictly about my personal career, it is better to go to Canada and prepare for hard court,” Medvedev said last week. “If at the age of 40 I can say that I have played in the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles, I have had a lot of fun in my life and my career. I will be happy.”
Alcaraz, who turned 21 in May, is practically foaming at the mouth to play in his first Olympic Games. He said he will “give 100 percent for my country” and then figure out what his pre-US Open schedule will look like.
“I have to think about it,” he said.
He will have plenty of fellow players to consult.
(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletics; photo: Abbie Parr / Getty Images)