By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
With two medal-producing performances in doubles and mixed doubles, Jack Sock led the United States to a team gold medal in tennis at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero.
Sock was the only player to win multiple medals in the tennis competition, winning mixed doubles gold with Bethanie Mattek-Sands and men’s doubles bronze with Steve Johnson. Sock’s efforts squeezed out the first-ever team gold medal for the United States, beating out Spain by one point, Rafael Nadal not able to win the bronze medal match against Kei Nishikori that would have tied the USA for the gold medal. The Spaniards, whose best performance was winning gold in men’s doubles with Nadal and Marc Lopez, finished with 21 points, one shy of Team USA’s 22 points. Russia and the Czech Republic each garnered 17 points to share team bronze.
Are you reading this and thinking that something is amiss here?
There is always chatter every four years during the staging of the Olympic tennis event on how a team event could be organized. Only men’s and women’s singles and doubles as well as mixed doubles are contested. However, if you gave each team a point for every individual match victory they get in each competition, you could determine a team champion.
I wrote about this four years ago when Jo-Wilfried Tsonga led France to the men’s team title and Maria Sharapova led Russia to the women’s team title at the London Games in 2012. Read more here http://www.worldtennismagazine.com/archives/7752
If you wanted to calculate just a women’s team and men’s team medal standings from Rio (not taking in consideration mixed doubles), then Spain would be your men’s team gold medal winner in Rio with 15 points, followed by Argentina, Japan and the United States in a three-way tie for silver. In a women’s team event, Elena Vesnina and Ekaterina Makarova’s win in the gold medal match edged Russia to women’s team gold, one point better 15-14 over the Czech Republic. Germany, led by Olympic singles silver medalist Angelique Kerber, also collected team bronze with 8 points.
Prior to the creation of the NCAA Team Tournament in college tennis in the United States, team champions were determined in this manner, awarding each team a point for each individual match victory.
