by Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
The tennis competition at the Paris Olympic Games was one of the best ever.
The nine-day event featured riveting matches, packed crowds and star players playing sizzling tennis while showing off incredible emotions while competing for their nations. The event was historic in that it featured the career swan songs for future Hall of Famers Andy Murray and Angie Kerber and likely Rafael Nadal, while Novak Djokovic completed his career Golden Grand Slam with his gold medal performance. (And Sara Errani did it too with her doubles gold alongside Jasmine Paolini.) And, to boot, it was played at some of the great sporting venues in the world, Roland Garros, the site of the French Open every year.
There are three other things that stood out for me in particular at Olympic tennis in Paris that I outline below.
- “Olympic Crowds” Should Be A New Term (Replacing Davis Cup Crowd) – The crowds at Olympic tennis were amazing. Flag were flying everywhere, and even flags of countries not represented in the matches they were watching, as Rennae Stubbs talked about while broadcasting the match on Peacock. With flags, chants, singing and exurberant cheering, the atmosphere at Olympic tennis was top-notch. There was a time during the event where I was going to tweet / post on X that the crowds there are like Davis Cup crowds. However, since Davis Cup has dropped in visibility and atmosphere since the ITF changed the format that causes for more neutral matches, that atmosphere has suffered so the term “Davis Cup crowd” or “Davis Cup atmosphere” is pretty much gone. From now on, we should refer it to “Olympic Tennis atmosphere.”
- Let’s See More Doubles – More doubles matches where showcased and received more attention at the Olympics than all four Grand Slam tournaments combined. Of course, you had exciting teams like Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz and also Andy Murray and Dan Evans and Tommy Paul with Taylor Fritz, but also teams of doubles specialists like eventual gold medalists John Peers and Matt Ebden and silver medalists Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek. It’s clear that winning Olympic doubles – and even just medaling in Olympic tennis – rates higher than a major championship. Same can be said for mixed doubles. As I said on my video version of this article here https://youtu.be/vfyfYfNsKQc?si=hGWB-43PfXQqfbWY The ATP, WTA and the Grand Slams should look into ways at getting more star players (ie singles players) to play in the doubles to add star power and excitement to that discipline. I have suggested many times that doubles and mixed doubles at majors should start after the second round of singles, as you can see me discuss here https://youtu.be/3fGp1JzwEsM?si=CZvWMyyaWiuVvIES and read about here https://www.worldtennismagazine.com/archives/21267 and the same for mixed doubles, as I wrote about here https://www.worldtennismagazine.com/archives/23464 The Olympic doubles matches were riveting and gave tennis fans and amateur players (who mostly play doubles) more a look at what top-level doubles looks like because it is seldom on TV or played on feature courts at events.
- Olympic Match Tiebreakers Are Awesome – Your Olympic life hangs in the balance when you split sets and a 10-point tiebreaker decides if you are still alive for Gold or if you start dreaming about Los Angeles in 2028. I tweeted out during the Games that Olympic doubles match tiebreakers was the most exciting thing in tennis. I am a pretty jaded tennis fan as I have seen A LOT of tennis in my day, but I found myself screaming in excitement at some of the match tiebreakers at Olympic tennis – and without really a big rooting interest! In mixed doubles, nine of 16 matches where decided in match tiebreakers. The doubles silver medalists, Zhizhen Zhang & Wang Xinyu, played match tiebreakers in all four of their matches in Paris. Many players who wouldn’t normally play doubles or mixed doubles will enter two of the three or all three (like Taylor Fritz and Coco Gauff did, for example) so they really want to win a medal which makes losing a match tiebreaker that much more devastating and making it that much more exciting for fans. In men’s doubles, 10 of the 32 matches where decided by match tiebreakers while nine of 32 matches had match tiebreakers in women’s doubles. All the gold medal matches in doubles where decided in match tiebreakers. The doubles silver medalists, Zhizhen Zhang & Wang Xinyu played match tiebreakers in all four of their matches in Paris.
