Tennis Mailbag: Recapping the Paris Olympics and Previewing Los Angeles 2028

Jon Wertheim answers your lingering questions from the Games, unpacking doubles results, eye-catching player remarks and some interpersonal drama.

Vekic, Zheng and Swiatek topped the women's singles podium in Paris, with Zheng taking home the gold medal for China. / Amber Searls-USA TODAY Sports

Hey everyone …

• Here’s a column on Novak Djokovic, from GOAT to unicorn**.

• Here is the latest Served podcast.

• A (mercifully, final) reminder that Andy Roddick and I will be doing a live show in conjunction with the Cincinnati Open this Friday at a microbrewery near the event. Feel free to stop by. Info here. Also, we’ll be doing some additional shows in and around New York during the U.S. Open. Details to come.

 ** Credit to my friends at Canada’s Sportsnet for this designation.

Onward … 

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Bummer [about Carson hosting the tennis event at the 2028 Olympics in L.A.]. Zero atmosphere there and difficult to get to with traffic.

Anonymous

• The tennis event at the 2012 Olympics was held at the All England Club, d/b/a Wimbledon. The tennis event at the 2024 Olympics was held, of course, at Roland Garros. The tennis event at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles is scheduled to be held at … the Carson Center, a meh venue used as a USTA training facility, once the site of a sparsely attended WTA event.

Spurred by a friend who will go nameless, we wondered aloud whether this is negotiable and if L.A. can do better. One idea is Indian Wells. Yes, it will be far from the Olympics nerve center in Westwood. But the Paris Games held surfing in Tahiti (and sailing in Marseille) and if the 2028 softball contests are being held in Oklahoma, tennis can survive at the universally-beloved facility two hours east of downtown. 

The big drawback: As many of you noted, the August heat is oppressive, regularly topping 110 degrees. The good news is that we are getting serious about man-made climate change, and surely these sorts of sci-fi conditions will diminish in four years. (Kidding.) Indian Wells does have lights, so you could start in the late afternoon. But players’ health must take precedence and the equivalent of playing sports inside a hair dryer is ill-advised. Point taken.

Other options: Tennis events were held at UCLA during the 1984 Olympics. The hitch: Other UCLA facilities will be used, so there will be congestion. Another idea: Ojai. Though, again, it might be oppressively hot. San Diego is perhaps too far. Pepperdine in Malibu? The clubs of Beverly Hills where Naomi Osaka, among others, trains? What about celebrity home courts—Jimmy Goldstein, Pete Sampras, the Robert Evans-Zaslav estate?

Bottom line: We can do better than Carson. But it will take some push and creativity.

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When you have the silver, you stay on a defeat. When you earn the bronze, it's victory!

@mich255

• I’m, admittedly, in the tank for the Olympics. But this is another virtue of the Games, and another reason why tennis belongs. At every other event all players, save one, leave town on a losing streak. At the Games, there are bronze medal winners—Iga Świątek and Lo Musetti in the 2024 singles events—who go out on a winning note. And as Donna Vekić will attest, a silver medal is immeasurably more gratifying than a runner-up trophy.

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Medvedev fell to Félix Auger-Aliassime in the third round of the men's singles event at the Paris Games. / Julian Finney/Getty Images

I saw the quote you cited from Daniil Medvedev. Maybe he wants to improve his doubles, rather than [diss] doubles.

Glenn, Seattle

• Hey! Easy on Medvedev there, tough guy! Hands off our quote machine! Studied blandness has become a social contagion of sports. Give me this guy every day of the week. Twice on Sunday. And four times on the court.

Medvedev’s quote after losing a mixed doubles match with Mirra Andreeva: “Sometimes I can play doubles well, but in principle, four people on the court disturbs me.” 

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Hi Jon, 

As an avid tennis fan who flies across the country yearly to go to the Indian Wells tournament and has gone to three of the four grand slams, I am absolutely gobsmacked at the price of the U.S. Open tickets. I have gone for over 20 years, missing last year. I recall the year before paying $60 for a grounds pass. This year, you're lucky if you can get a ticket for under $200. What really seems upsetting is that every ticket is sold and then re-sold at these exorbitant prices.  My anger comes at the U.S. Open for allowing this to happen.  

I know the U.S. Open gets record crowds every year but it seems like such an insult to tennis fans to charge such fees.  

I am just wondering what your thoughts are on this?  

Thank you!

Laurie Rosen

• I am a capitalist. I believe in the market, much as I believe in gravity. If people are willing to pay $200 for grounds passes, that’s what grounds passes are worth. The USTA may be a (harrumph, harrumph … and hope no one looks too closely at this) non-profit. But it seeks to find streams of revenue, which fund the growth and promotion of tennis. Is there not a fiduciary duty to maximize said revenues?

All that said, there is no faster way to kill a sport than to make it unaffordable to watch. And there are few worse optics than the USTA talking about access, diversity and philanthropy while making sure its signature event has a prohibitive and disqualifying price point.

The solution is simple. And it’s one that many pro sports teams have already discovered. Distort the market. Charge market rates for a certain percentage of tickets. And withhold the rest (20%?) to sell sub-market, at reasonable prices. If Hedge Fund Harry wants to buy a box for the finals, charge him whatever he can bear to pay. If a tennis-curious family of four wants grounds passes for a day, the USTA cannot, in good conscience, expect it to cost $1,000.

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There was a lot of surprising behavior at the Olympics, some of it from the U.S. Stress or bad sportsmanship?

Thanks, Sue

• I’ll be charitable and say stress. This is the explanation Peter Bodo offered in his column. 

But, yes, if we are going to try and be objective—and we are; always—these Olympics did not comprise a banner event for U.S. women. And less because of the scorelines than the comportment. Especially at an event predicated on unity through sports … especially at events where you represent your country … you ought to be on your best behavior, and err on the side of discretion and sportsmanship. Too often that did not happen.

None of the transgressions were felonies. None of these were national embarrassments. None rose to the level of scandal. But they were all poor. 

A judgment call doesn’t go your way? Perhaps it’s better to compartmentalize it the way you would a let-cord winner—it’s only one point; it takes a minimum of 48 to win a match; we’ll be okay here—rather than turn it into a prolonged summit and even invoke Serena Williams. Your opponent bothers you? Fine. Take it up with them in the sanctity of the locker room. Or, if you must call them out, do so citing specifics. Don’t take broadsides that, as they say in the law, would be dismissed on “void for vagueness” grounds, citing insincerity or “going about things in a cutthroat way.”

Tennis is stressful. The Olympics—the overlay that comes with competing for your country—compounds stress. The American women have far more winners than unforced errors, plenty to offset any lapses in Paris. But this behavior—individually and collectively—was surprising and unbefitting of the Olympic occasion. 

Collins and Świątek shared a tense exchange following their match at the Paris Olympics. / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

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One feature I am really enjoying in watching Olympic tennis is that they usually keep the cameras on the stands during changeovers (fewer ads) and you can watch people dancing to the music and having a good time. That makes it feel more similar to what makes going to a match in person fun. 

Barbara

• Amen. The Wimbledon feed—which is aimed at the BBC and its absence of commercials—wins here, too. A minor pet peeve: the lack of identification. Sometimes you’re watching a random person. Other times—with no graphics reference from the announcers—you see a fan and say, Whoa, isn’t that Hugh Jackman? … Wait, what? Did they just show Pink?

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Is the reason points were scrapped [in the Olympics] because of the four-player-per-country limit or another reason? There should definitely be points.

Anthony Webb

• Basically, yes. And I think we could argue either way here. Is it fair to award ranking points when the qualification system departs from the rankings? On the other hand, you beat Rafael Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz and four other opponents to win such a meaningful event and you get zero points to show for it?

Djokovic's gold medal will do a lot for his already impressive legacy, but he'll receive zero ranking points from the championship. / Amber Searls-USA TODAY Sports

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Hi Jon,

Yet again, the theory that doubles teams of top singles players can beat doubles specialists has been disabused. When will U.S. team organizers realize, admit and modify behavior for team selections? 

Rajeev Ram was infamously left off the Davis Cup team because apparently “we got this” was the singles players’ mantra. Nicole Melichar-Martinez was left off the Olympics squad and Team USA experienced similar negative results. 

Please write and/or speak on your thoughts regarding team selections and the apparently pervasive belief that top men singles players are better at doubles than “specialists”.

Thanks, Lance

• The dirty secret is that sometimes the stars have leverage. As a condition of their participation, they can ask to play—or sit out—events other than singles. And it bears mention that there are high-profile cases of singles players beating doubles players. Roger Federer, Stan Wawrinka, Andy Murray and Nadal each have won gold medals in doubles or mixed doubles. But your point is well-taken. When in doubt—and when politics are not an issue—a team is better off going with the accomplished and experienced double players.

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Hello Jon, 

Thank you for your great SI articles. I am sure that you have heard of Steffi Graf?  What makes Djokovic the greatest living athlete compared to Steffi with her Golden Slam? And did you mean the greatest male athlete? It is so important to make this distinction.

Thank you!

Jen

• Well aware. I’m a longtime admirer and champion of her body of work. I’m not sure what this references. I don’t recall making any comparisons between the two. But Djokovic has won more majors, more matches and done it over a longer band of time. 

Let’s save it for another time, but at some point, we need to establish semantic parameters for whether we want to take pains to emphasize men versus women—or work on the assumption that fans appreciate that since they don’t compete against each other. If someone says Hubert Hurkacz is the current ace leader is it truly necessary to specify ATP and not tennis overall (Elena Rybakina)? 

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Shots

• Congrats, Richard Kent on his new book The Madness of Ivy League Basketball.

• The WTA announced two key changes to the 2024 calendar during the Asian swing later this season. The WTA 500 sanction previously held by the Zhengzhou Open will be transferred to the Ningbo Open starting in 2024, increasing its status from a WTA 250 event. The new WTA 500 Ningbo Open will take place during week 42 of the calendar, commencing Oct. 14. The vacant WTA 250 sanction will see a special one-year return to Hua Hin for the second staging of the Thailand Open this season, which will begin on Sept. 16.