For many, tennis and the Olympic Games are a strange combination, and this is even more true for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Just over a month after leaving the clay courts of Roland Garros behind, the world’s best tennis players are back at it again, at a time of year when they should actually be kicking off hardcourt tennis in North America.
Twelve years ago, in the glory days of the London Olympics, players would essentially just move across town, from Wimbledon to the Olympic Village, and then commute to the All England Club, where the main tournament had just finished, for another tournament. Easy peasy. Not so much since then.
In 2016, the big question for the Rio Games was who wanted to schlep to South America and risk contracting Zika, the mosquito-borne virus that was a quiet rage in Brazil. In 2021, navigating COVID restrictions and testing, and playing to empty stadiums in a climate that felt like the surface of the sun, was part of the deal in Tokyo.
Britain’s Andy Murray won his second consecutive Olympic gold medal at the 2016 Olympic Games. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
This year sees a strange transition from the slowest surface in tennis (clay) to one of the fastest (the grass at Wimbledon), then back to the slow clay and finally to the hard courts of North America for a brief preparation for the US Open.
This is heaven for a player like Iga Swiatek, the world number one and a clay court expert. She is probably one of the rare athletes who goes to Paris in any sport and can just roll in and collect her gold medal. She just doesn’t lose at Roland Garros, where she has won the French Open four times in the last five years.
It’s complicated for almost everyone.
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Three top Americans, Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda, have all died. Too much time traveling. Too much hardcourt preparation for 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 decision, but not so much because of the tennis tournament or the chance to win a medal. He’s a basketball fanatic and thinks this will be the only time LeBron James and Stephen Curry will play together at the Olympics.
“That’s going to be iconic,” said Tiafoe, who is confident he will still be good enough to make the team when the Summer Games are held in Los Angeles in four years.
Belarus’ Aryna Sabalenka, the two-time reigning Australian Open champion, and Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur, a three-time Grand Slam finalist, have also withdrawn, citing injury concerns.
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“I’m really curious to see how the players will play the Olympics and the hard court season,” said Jabeur, who has struggled all year with a knee injury that could be aggravated by such a drastic change in the surface. “Honestly, it’s going to be really tough.”
However, every one who succeeds creates an opportunity for someone who wouldn’t miss it for the world. Chris Eubanks was ranked No. 6 on the list of U.S. players eligible to fill one of the four U.S. singles spots. 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 his worst surface.
“I’ll find out,” he said.
The opening ceremony will take place the night before the tennis tournament starts. He may have to play the next morning.
Japan’s Naomi Osaka lights the Olympic torch during the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t miss that.”
Christian Coleman, the American sprinter, was in Eubanks’ fifth grade class. They’ve been buddies ever since. Now they’re going to 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 organizes 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 is expected to be one of the Games’ marquee events.
Assuming his knee holds up, Novak Djokovic, who underwent meniscus surgery on June 5, reached the Wimbledon final, will be there too. Despite winning 24 Grand Slam singles titles, Djokovic has never won an Olympic gold medal in four attempts. It’s the most surprising gap in his resume. He was the man of the Tokyo Games, doing splits with gymnasts in the Olympic Village gym, getting rowdy and wild with other Serbian athletes as they watched events together, and posing for selfies with just about everyone.
Novak Djokovic won a bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Is the glass 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 a bit of an oddball at the Games. It’s home to some of the sport’s biggest stars, but a gold medal isn’t held in the same regard 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 ITF president, said the sport’s return to the Olympics has been one of the keys to its growth since 1988. Participation has more than doubled to about 100 million players. There are now 213 countries with tennis federations, compared with 104 in 1988. Of those, 157 compete in the men’s national team event, the Davis Cup, and 138 compete in the women’s Billie Jean King Cup, compared with 51 and fewer than 40 in 1988.
“It’s not a traditional tennis audience,” Haggerty said. “It’s an opportunity for us to reach a different audience.”
Just as they dressed Wimbledon in pink in 2012, the organizers want to dress up Roland Garros so that it doesn’t look like a smaller version of the French Open.
They’ll have to cover the Rolex boards, since Omega is the Olympic sponsor. There’s also no electronic line calling, no prize money and, perhaps most importantly, no ranking points. With no chance to earn ranking points, Denis Shapovalov, the Canadian star who is trying to recover from injury and is desperate to get his ranking back to where he can be placed for major tournaments, said he had little choice but 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 is its own quadrennial appeal. Easy for him to say — he won’t even give up two weeks’ salary to compete. There’s also the appeal of the spectacle of the Olympics and the break it offers from the hamster wheel of the regular tour. Many players would compete on clay for a week if it offered the chance to march — or in this case, take a ferry across the Seine — during the Opening Ceremony and live and/or socialize with 10,000 of the world’s best athletes at their chosen venues in the Olympic Village.
“Emma and I already have a plan to trade pins and go all over town,” said Danielle Collins, who will be making up the U.S. team with Emma Navarro. “It’s definitely a bucket list item for me.”
Coco Gauff wants to win a medal, but also meet Simone Biles, the best gymnast ever, and Sha’Carri Richardson, the favorite for the gold medal in the 100 meters. She also wants to work together again with two other American runners, Gabby Thomas and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
It turns out that Daniil Medvedev is also an Olympian. “Very easy decision,” he said, claiming he loved the atmosphere in Tokyo, which was likely the worst Summer Olympics ever due to all the COVID restrictions. Given that, Medvedev, a Russian who will compete as a neutral athlete due to his country’s invasion of Ukraine, will get himself a stint in Paris.
“I know that if I think only about my personal career, it is better to go to Canada and prepare on hard courts,” Medvedev said last week. “When I am 40, and I can say that I have played in the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles, that I have had a lot of fun in my life, my career, then I will be happy.”
Alcaraz, who turned 21 in May, is eager to play in his first Olympics. He said he will give “100 percent for my country” before figuring out his pre-US Open schedule.
“I have to think about it,” he said.
He can consult with many fellow players.
(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletics; photo: Abbie Parr / Getty Images)
