Tennis and the Olympics are a strange combination for many, but none more so than the 2024 Paris Games.
Just over a month after the world's best tennis players left the red courts of Roland Garros, they will return to them again just as they were meant to begin their North American hard-court tour.
Twelve years ago, at the height of the London Olympics, players basically just traveled across the city from Wimbledon to the Olympic Village, then to the All England Club where the most important tournament had just finished, and then played another match. It was that easy. But it hasn't been that way since.
The big question ahead of the 2016 Rio Olympics was which athletes wanted to travel to South America and risk catching Zika, a mosquito-borne virus then quietly raging in Brazil. In 2021, Tokyo would require COVID-19 restrictions, testing and playing in empty stadiums in weather that resembled the surface of the sun.
Britain's Andy Murray won his second consecutive gold medal at the 2016 Olympic Games. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
This year will be a strange transition, going from the slowest court in tennis (clay) to the fastest (Wimbledon's grass), back to slower clay, and then onto North American hard courts for an abbreviated tune-up run for the U.S. Open.
It's heaven for a player like Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 and clay-court maestro. She's likely one of the few players heading into Paris who can essentially storm in and win gold in any sport. She's unbeatable at Roland Garros; she's won the French Open four times in the past five years.
For most others, it's complicated.
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The top three Americans — Ben Shelton, Francis Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda — all passed. They had too much time on the road, too much hard-court preparation ahead of the U.S. Open, the most important Grand Slam of the year for many Americans.
The son of immigrants from Sierra Leone, Tiafoe has a deep love for his country and for representing it as an athlete, and said it was a tough decision to make, but it wasn't for the tennis tournament or the chance to win a medal. He's a huge basketball fan and believes this is the only chance LeBron James and Stephen Curry will ever play together in the Olympics.
“That's going to be legendary,” said Tiafoe, who is confident he's still good enough to make the national team when the Summer Olympics come to Los Angeles in four years' time.
Two-time Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and three-time Grand Slam finalist Ons Jabeur of Tunisia also withdrew, citing injury concerns.
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“I'm really interested to see how the players will perform in the Olympics and the hard-court season,” said Jabeur, who has been plagued by a knee injury all year, fearing a drastic change in surface could aggravate the injury. “It's going to be a very tough competition, honestly.”
But whoever passes up gives an opportunity to someone they definitely don't want to miss out on. Chris Eubanks was sixth on the list of U.S. players eligible to fill one of the four U.S. singles spots. When he got the call, he not only relished the chance to play in the team event, but also to soak up the Olympic atmosphere.
Clay is his least favorite court.
“I'll manage it,” he said.
The opening ceremony takes place the night before the tennis tournament begins, and he may have to play the next morning.
Japan's Naomi Osaka lights the Olympic flame at the Tokyo 2020 Games. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
“Don't worry,” he said. “I'm not going to miss it.”
American sprinter Christian Coleman was in Eubanks' fifth-grade class and they've remained good friends ever since. Now the two will compete in the Olympics together, with Coleman making the U.S. relay team.
“That's awesome,” he said.
Last week, the International Tennis Federation, which runs the Olympic Games, boasted that 22 of the top 30 men's and women's players had confirmed they would take part, as did Rafael Nadal, who plays doubles with Carlos Alcaraz in what is set to be one of the Olympic marquee events.
Novak Djokovic, who underwent meniscus surgery on June 5, will be back in action if his knee condition holds. Djokovic, who reached the Wimbledon final, will also be there. Despite winning 24 Grand Slam titles, Djokovic has never won a gold medal in his four Olympic appearances, the most surprising hole in his resume. He was the star of the Tokyo Olympics, doing the splits with gymnasts in the Athletes' Village gymnasium, watching and cheering with other Serbian athletes, and taking selfies with anyone and everyone.
Novak Djokovic won the bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Is the glass nearly three-quarters full, or is it more than a quarter empty?
Nearly 40 years after its return to the Olympic scene after a 64-year hiatus, tennis still occupies a somewhat odd place at the Olympics: The sport's biggest stars compete, but gold medals don't carry the same luster as Grand Slam titles — except for players like Alexander Zverev and Belinda Bencic, gold medalists who have never won a Grand Slam singles title.
ITF president Dave Haggerty said tennis's re-entry into the Olympics since 1988 has been one of the keys to its growth. Participation has more than doubled, to almost 100 million. There are now 213 countries with tennis federations, up from 104 in 1988. Of those, 157 nations 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.
“This is not a traditional tennis fan audience,” Haggerty said. “It's an opportunity for us to get a different audience.”
As with Wimbledon, which was decked out in pink in 2012, organisers plan to decorate Roland Garros so that it doesn't simply look like a scaled-down version of the French Open.
Because Omega is an Olympic sponsor, he'll have to hide his Rolex signage, there will be no electronic line calls, no prize money and, perhaps more importantly, no ranking points. With no chance of earning ranking points, Canadian star Denis Shapovalov, who is desperately trying to come back from injury and get back into the ranks that would earn him a seed in the biggest tournaments, said he had little choice but to skip the Olympics.
Venus and Serena Williams have won eight Olympic gold medals and 30 Grand Slam singles titles between them. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Haggerty said the purity of competing for medals alone is what draws him to the quadrennial Olympics. That's easier said than done, since he's not giving up two weeks' pay to participate. The spectacle of the Olympics and the freedom from the constant grind of a regular tour are also appealing. Many athletes would do well to compete on gravel roads for a week if the chance to march in the opening ceremony (or, in this case, ride a ferry across the Seine) and live and mingle with 10,000 of the world's best athletes in the Olympic Village in their chosen sport gave them a reason to do so.
“Emma and I are already making plans to exchange pins and go around the village,” said Danielle Collins, who teams up with Emma Navarro on the U.S. team. “It's definitely a bucket list item for me.”
Coco Gauff wants to win a medal, but she also wants to compete against the greatest gymnast of all time, Simone Biles, and Shakari Richardson, the favorite to win gold in the 100 meters, as well as two other American runners, Gabby Thomas and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, again.
Daniil Medvedev also turned out to be an Olympic man. “It was a very easy decision,” he said, claiming he liked the atmosphere in Tokyo, which, due to COVID-19 restrictions, had perhaps the worst atmosphere in the history of the Summer Olympics. Given that, Medvedev, a Russian competing as a neutral athlete because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, will have a good time in Paris.
“If I think strictly about my career, I know it's better to go to Canada and prepare for hard courts,” Medvedev said last week. “When I'm 40, I'll be happy if I can say that I've played in the Tokyo Olympics, the Paris Olympics and the Los Angeles Olympics and had a lot of fun in my life, in my career.”
Alcaraz, who turned 21 in May, is looking forward to competing in his first Olympic Games. He said he will “give 100 percent for my country” and then figure out what his schedule will be before the U.S. Open.
“I'll have to think about that,” he said.
He will have plenty of fellow players he can talk to.
(Illustration above: Dan Goldfarb / Athletic(Photo by Abby Parr/Getty Images)
