By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
Boasted by two medal performances in men’s doubles, the United States won the overall team tennis gold medal at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Led by a silver medal finish in men’s doubles by Austin Krajicek and Rajeev Ram and a bronze medal finish by Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul, the United States finished with 24 total match-win points, well ahead of the second place team Czechia, which earned a Team silver medal with 17 total match win points. Spain, with 14 total match win points, earned Team Bronze.
“What? Team Gold?” you may wonder. Many have discussed that there should be a team element to the Olympic tennis event, but there isn’t. In his historic tennis volume “The Bud Collins History of Tennis” Bud Collins wrote about how tennis returned to the Olympic program in 1988 but wrote “As usual, showing a lack of imagination, the ITF runs just another conventional tournament, overlooking the opportunity to innovate by adding a team competition (World Team Tennis rules), uniquely involving men and women.”
The format of a team event certainly is up for debate – and there are only so many days where you can hold singles, doubles, mixed and a team event.
So, taking a page out of how the NCAA team championship used to be determined before 1977– awarding one point per match victory in the individual singles and doubles championships – and implementing it with the singles, doubles and mixed events at the Olympics, and the United States would be the team champions and gold medalists.
I did the same calculations for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and “The ROC” – the Russian Olympic Committee – were the gold medalists with 24 total match wins, followed by Spain with silver with 18 match wins and the Czech Republic with bronze with 17 match wins, which you can read about here https://www.worldtennismagazine.com/archives/20121
In 2016 in Rio, the United States won the “mythical team gold medal” with 22 match win points, one better than Spain with 21 match win points. Russia and the Czech Republic each won 17 match win points to share third-place bronze. You can read about it here: xxx
Team USA members that earned “team” gold are Coco Gauff, Jessica Pegula, Danielle Collins, Emma Navarro, Desirae Krawczyk, Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul, Austin Krajicek, Rajeev Ram, Chris Eubanks and Marcos Giron.
To learn more about the history of tennis in the Olympics – and to see results and records of the event – fans can download the ebook “The Olympic Tennis Fact Book” here https://a.co/d/j4mj8Lh
