By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
One year from now, a big discussion point in tennis will be who is in and who is out of the Olympic Tennis Competition for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. The tennis competition will be played Saturday, July 25 – Sunday, August 2, 2020.
The ATP and WTA rankings from June 8, 2020 will be used to determine the 56 direct entries into the singles fields. Each nation is allowed a maximum of four singles entries and two doubles teams, with there being no more than six total team members. There will be 64 respective singles entries, 32 respective doubles teams and 16 mixed doubles teams.
When analyzing the rankings as they are today, the United States will likely have no problem getting four singles players into the women’s field. Sloane Stephens, Serena Williams, Madison Keys and Amanda Anisimova would qualify if the rankings during 2019 Wimbledon were used.
However, on the U.S. men’s side, it’s not as rosey. The singles entry cutoff using the current rankings would be No. 60, which would only allow three Americans to gain singles entry (John Isner at No. 12, Taylor Fritz at No. 31 and Frances Tiafoe at No. 38). John Isner chose not to participate in the Rio Games and may choose again not to play in Tokyo, which would mean only two Americans may only gain direct entry. Reilly Opelka, at No. 63 in the current rankings, would, hypothetically if the current 2019 Wimbledon rankings were used, slide in as a direct entry since Dominic Thiem of Austria has already said he will not play in Tokyo in 2020 and also Kevin Anderson’s status for South Africa is questionable since he does not play Davis Cup for his country. If Isner also does not play, then Opelka would gain direct entry in this hypothetical example. Of course, other players will get injured or announce that they will choose not to compete. All of this is at this point is speculative, of course, as a lot can happen with three major events, including this current edition of Wimbledon, will have ranking points that will be counted when determining the Olympic singles selections. Tiafoe has quarterfinal points to defend at the Australian Open in 2020 and Opelka has points from his ATP title at the New York Open to also defend.
One new back door opportunity for the U.S. Tennis Association and the United States – and other North, Central and South American countries – to slide in one or two singles entries is the 2019 Pan American Games, held this summer in Lima, Peru. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) announced that the Pan Am Games will be among three regional qualifiers for singles positions in the Olympic Games. (Also the Asian and African Games.) The singles winner and runner-up in the men’s and women’s singles competitions at the Pan Am Games will be awarded direct entries – ie “wild cards” – into the Olympic Games, provided that the nation they represent does not have the maximum number of entries already via direct ranking entries (this would be four) and if the player is ranked in the top 300 in their respective rankings. Therefore, if the United States only has two direct singles entries into the men’s singles event via the June 8, 2020 rankings, and an American man reaches the final or wins the Pan American Games tennis competition, then that player would slide into the Olympic singles field.
From my perspective, this could be an excellent opportunity for the USTA and some American men who are on the fringe of being directly accepted into the Olympic Games to potentially slide in and become Olympians. To boot, even representing your country at the Pan American Games is an excellent experience as well as it is a “mini-Olympics” for Western Hemisphere countries. I worked two Pan Am Games as a press officer for the USTA in Winnipeg, Canada and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, representing my country in my own unique way. In Winnipeg in 1999, the Bryan Brothers actually won the bronze in doubles, to go with their future bronze and gold medals they would win in future Olympic Games.
Players like No. 94 ranked Tennys Sandgren (a great clay court player), No. 111 Denis Kudla (an Olympian in 2016), No. 133 Bjorn Fratangelo, No. 133 Tommy Paul (a former French Open junior champ who nearly beat Dominic Thiem at the French Open this year) or even No. 182 Noah Rubin could see this an amazing opportunity. Would you risk out on playing a Challenger or in ATP qualifying rounds for a chance to represent your country and perhaps slide into the Olympic Games in a year? Of course, there is the risk that these players don’t reach the final of the Pan Am Games and will not qualify or even if they do reach the final, they would only gain entry into the Olympics if the United States does not directly qualify four singles players.
The Pan American Games tennis competition is slated to be played from Monday, July 29 to Sunday, August 4 – the same week as the ATP’s events in Washington, D.C. and Los Cabos, Mexico and the ATP Challenger in Lexington, Kentucky. It will also be contested on clay courts.
