Is tennis an olympic sport?

Ok, to follow up on the comment from the other thread should tennis be part of the Olympics or is it simply too mainstream/global/professional to be a part?

Personally I think "No"...for me the game is far too developed, money-rich and played on a scale that transcends even the Olympics. Similarly football.
I know other sports at the Olympics are also professional but not to the same degree.

I will go with no.

For me this year for example has been disappointing. You have at the hallow turf of Wimbledon, you have Federer there post Wimbledon success gunning for it and despite a lot of top names being there despite one massive star missing it has been a flop.

I am all for supporting the game of tennis and getting out there to the masses and inspiring future generations, but as an Olympic event it isn't. It is a sideshow and distraction to an already packed calendar for the players and in years to come I can see less participation and maybe it being dropped from the games.

It is being used for the wrong reasons at the Olympics in my eyes.

I'm assuming the question is "should tennis be an Olympic sport" or "is it an Olympic sport at heart" and my view is that the answer should be no. It's developed too far with its own rythm, history, and routines away from the Olympics and has little to gain from and little to offer to the Olympics apart from money.

I don't think it should be an olympic sport as like football it has a lot of coverage elsewhere. That said I don't get why everyone's going on about what a disappointment or how much of a sideshow this one is. It's no more so than last time, the top players still really want this and there's some good tennis being played.

No.

I am inclined to say yes. I would prefer to see Bo5 at Olympics (a la slam) and make it equal to a slam since it occurs every four years anyway.

laverfan - given how crowded the tour schedule already is even in a normal (ie non-Olympic) year, I think making the Olympics Bo5 - whilst a good idea in some ways - could in fact bring its own unwanted problems. I can see players choosing to miss, or withdraw from, various non-mandatory main tour events. Or worse still (??) .... perhaps a return to the days when many top players either didn't bother with the Olympics at all, or at least didn't take it too seriously.

no it isnt....Olympics used to purely be about amateurs in all sports...

laverfan wrote:I am inclined to say yes. I would prefer to see Bo5 at Olympics (a la slam) and make it equal to a slam since it occurs every four years anyway.

Then you'd need to find 2 weeks for it in the calendar, because you can't schedule a tournament with 5-6 Bo5 matches in 7 days. They struggle each Olympic year to find one week in the packed schedule. I don't think making it Bo5 would make it equal to a slam anyway - just an unnecessary slog. The draw is smaller and different (limiting each country to 4 players maximum), the way the draw is set up is different (nationalities being drawn to avoid one another), the top men want to play doubles and singles so you have got to see how they can recover from potentially gut-busting Bo5's to put in a decent doubles shift. I think you'd see more tanking, more no-shows, and possibly more injuries at the USO like last year or the best players not going near doubles - which would be a shame and really devalue the tournament since most top doubles teams are not the same nationality.

While some main players are still playing in Washington , some have no interest in showing up and for those who showed up there is no coverage for the fans to watch it.

I have no clue when and what matches are going on, everything completely ill-organized.

I don't see anybody got any interest in Olympic tennis barring may be few Fed fans who like to see him accomplish it.

Tennis as an Olympic Sport? Answer is nooooo.

To be honest with so much going on at the OG, tennis just seems like a by product. For that reason it could never have the same standing as a slam or even the WTF.

In any case I think there is a finite enthusiasm amongst the players and fans for Olympic tennis. I can very well imagine this 'Olympics are the pinnacle of sport' attitude recently adopted by some of the players disappearing once the current crop of top players start to fade or retire.

Again, the prominence of Olympic tennis is just a fad that's been boosted by incessant media hype and a vocal generation of players who happen to be very high profile (top four) voicing their desire to win a medal. This combined with the fact that it's being held in London (a tennis friendly city) and at Wimbledon has raised the stakes for this Olympic year. However, I can imagine half empty stadiums in Rio reversing this trend quite quickly.



emancipator

invisiblecoolers wrote:While some main players are still playing in Washington , some have no interest in showing up and for those who showed up there is no coverage for the fans to watch it.

I have no clue when and what matches are going on, everything completely ill-organized.

I don't see anybody got any interest in Olympic tennis barring may be few Fed fans who like to see him accomplish it.

Tennis as an Olympic Sport? Answer is nooooo.

invisible : I'm definitely with you in general.

However, on your specific point "I have no clue when and what matches are going on ....." : in fairness to the ITF there IS a clear published schedule, available for anyone to read if they choose to do so. Of course the rain yesterday has understandably disrupted things to a degree.

And as for spectator interest : many of the matches have attracted very similar numbers in the stands as Wimbledon (ie. the Slam version !) does, perhaps more in some cases.

The ITF schedule and scoreboard is pretty good actually. And it's all on the BBC

lags72 wrote:

invisiblecoolers wrote:While some main players are still playing in Washington , some have no interest in showing up and for those who showed up there is no coverage for the fans to watch it.

I have no clue when and what matches are going on, everything completely ill-organized.

However, on your specific point "I have no clue when and what matches are going on ....." : in fairness to the ITF there IS a clear published schedule, available for anyone to read if they choose to do so. Of course the rain yesterday has understandably disrupted things to a degree.

And as for spectator interest : many of the matches have attracted very similar numbers in the stands as Wimbledon (ie. the Slam version !) does, perhaps more in some cases.

Lags I appreciate the schedule is on ITF, but the Olympics site is not as friendly as say many ATP Tournament site, to be fair I lost my interest to check the schedule after it took some time just to get it, and to add to it the rain delay means all schedules are completely mismatched and re-scheduled events are not displayed quickly.

Next comes the broadcast, if they are not selling the products for viewers how on earth people living in North America gonna watch it? Its not even in Bet365 , seriously did they sell the broadcast rights to anybody? my friends living in Europe don't get the live telecast either.

If Tennis is just one of a minor sport in Olympics then it doesn't deserve this much attention the hype its generated, it doesn't have any historical value and neither gonna develop any value if this continue inspite of being the best efforts by top level players.

What annoys me about the Summer Olympics is the unfairness in which participants in team sports such as Basketball, Hockey and Football get to listen to their own countries national anthem prior to the start of every match, whilst participants in individual sports such as athletics, swimming, badminton, judo, gymnastics etc (i.e. the sports normally associated with a Summer Olympics prior to 1988) won't get a cats in hells chance of listening to their own national anthem until he or she wins the event entered into.

Yes I think it is, or rather it definitely has a place in the Olympics. I love the fact that we get to see the top players in the doubles which we never do at the majors nowadays.

It is just not the premier accolade for a tennis player because of the bo3 format, the fact that a country can only field 4 players so it is possible to have 6 fully deserving of inclusion, 2 of which are ranked higher than another country's entries which could potentially change the depth of quality in the field (though I guess this could apply to other sports too).

It's a nice extra.

time please wrote:Yes I think it is, or rather it definitely has a place in the Olympics. I love the fact that we get to see the top players in the doubles which we never do at the majors nowadays.

It is just not the premier accolade for a tennis player because of the bo3 format, the fact that a country can only field 4 players so it is possible to have 6 fully deserving of inclusion, 2 of which are ranked higher than another country's entries which could potentially change the depth of quality in the field (though I guess this could apply to other sports too).

It's a nice extra.

But the question then is, would Andy Murray have prefered getting the Gold Medal at the Olympics or winning a Grand Slam Singles Title?

gboycottnut wrote:

time please wrote:Yes I think it is, or rather it definitely has a place in the Olympics. I love the fact that we get to see the top players in the doubles which we never do at the majors nowadays.

It is just not the premier accolade for a tennis player because of the bo3 format, the fact that a country can only field 4 players so it is possible to have 6 fully deserving of inclusion, 2 of which are ranked higher than another country's entries which could potentially change the depth of quality in the field (though I guess this could apply to other sports too).

It's a nice extra.

But the question then is, would Andy Murray have prefered getting the Gold Medal at the Olympics or winning a Grand Slam Singles Title?

Obvious he would have preferred both if he can win them, if not he would be happy with what ever win.

invisible - agreed, things are far from perfect on the site, but then I don't know how it compares with sites covering other London 2012 events .... haven't been looking at them. Perhaps they're of an equal standard (maybe even worse ...??)

And let's not forget that the ATP site is self-evidently 100% devoted to the men's game. They have a large, full-time dedicated team working on it year-round ; so perhaps little surprise that they end up doing up a better job than the ITF/IOC more basic offering.

I understand the calendar issues, Barry. It is indeed a tough challenge.

With Olympics (and DC) there is a chance to represent your country. One option would be to skip DC the year of Olympics and have a set of country matches like DC which culminate in the Olympics.

DC being an annual tourney while Olympics being a 4-year cycle does present challenges, even with this approach.

I went for Yes.

The notion that an Olympic Gold should be the pinnacle of a sport/event is too simplistic.

Tennis is not the only problem with it's Grand Slams v Gold Medals scenario.

In Boxing you have Amateur Gold v Professional World Title. The Cubans turned Olympic Boxing into an art form and didn't recognise the professional code or pro world titles.

Basketball, Ice Hockey all field inferior teams for the Olympics than they do for the NBA, NHL etc.

Football is a unique problem inasmuch the women's Gold medal is probably the pinnacle for women (75,000 watching the women play at Wembley, you would not get that in Women's World Cup) but for the men it certainly is not the pinnacle but if you have women's football in the Olympics then surely for equality you must include men's football too?

Then there's cycling. Is the TDF inferior to a road race Olympic Gold? Again the TDF is probably regarded more highy so should we chuck out road race cycling too because the TDF is more valuable?

Tennis being one of the original sports of the modern Olympics before its 60 year hiatus should remain an Olympic sport in my opinion. Too many other sports need chucking out if you remove tennis.

SDB

You raise an interesting point, but there is also a need to view things in an historical context

Until the 80s, the Olympics was the pinnacle of amateur (or at least shamateur) sport in most fields - boxing (which remains strictly amateur), road race cycling, basketball, ice hockey were all part of the Olympic schedule at that time.

The problem came from the demands of track and field athletics in particular for their sport to become fully professional - it always strikes me as a bit ironic that the governing body is still the International Amateur Athletics Federation. The situation in the 80s was fairly untenable, in that athletes were being paid to compete, but that their earnings were being held in trust until they retired.

Obiously, athletics was not going to be removed from the Olympics because of its embracing of professionalism, and this led to changes in other traditional Olympic sports such as cycling, basketball and ice hockey, where professionals were subsequently allowed to compete.

Tennis is a special case, because it has little Olympic heritage and was only reintroduced during the era of the pro Olympics. It is also a struggle to fit the tournament into the schedule of the normal season's calendar (slightly less so this year than for the Beijing Games, simply because of location). I'm not convinced that it really fits well into the Olympics in its current form - it's too much like a reduced version of a Slam tournament. Perhaps the organisers could consider a national team event similar to the Hopman Cup - 2 player teams competing in singles and doubles. You could potentially have 3 parallel tournaments of mens, ladies and mixed. At least then the tournament would be distinctive.

To be honest I think there is too much focus on whether or not tennis is a tradtional Olympic sport. All the uninjured top players are here and taking part clearly means a great deal to them. This was well demonstrated today by Murrays immediate reaction to his victory over Baghdatis today. It is a great opportunity to represent your country at a big event - especially for those countries (like GB) whose DC / Fed Cup teams are not exactly setting the world on fire. It is not one of the core olympic sports but what the heck - I am enjoying watching it among all the other sports.