Tennis at the Olympic Games is a week away, and at the same time, the ATP tournaments will still be played, which highlights a certain clash between the organizations.
For a long time, the Olympic Games have clashed with the ATP calendar, which is something most tennis players accept. Every four years, when the Games roll around, they are inserted midway through the calendar, but the Tour doesn’t stop.
It won’t stop this time either, as there will be tournaments played events at the same time as tennis will be played at the Olympics. Obviously, the tennis competition at the Olympics doesn’t last as long as the whole Olympic Games and will conclude about a week after it begins, which gives players who did play there a chance to return to ATP action fairly soon.
This year, the Citi Open in Washington, which will run from July 29th to August 4th, will be running alongside the Olympics, which will end on the same day, but start two days earlier.
When speaking to InsideSport at the 2024 Hamburg Open, where he competes, and asked about the calendar clash, Zverev admitted that it’s not a huge secret that the ITF and ATP aren’t ‘best friends.’
“The ITF or the Olympics are not best friends with the ATP, that’s not a secret. Everybody continues their own tour. Yes, the Olympics is one of the, if not the, most important events we have in sports.”
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter too much because, the prestige of the Olympics will always lure the best players away from the Tour, even with the promise of ATP points and prize money on offer.
“So, the best players in the world are always going to play the Olympics over anything else, over points and over prize money.”
Not all will play at the Olympics, though. This year, some notable players, such as Andrey Rublev, Karen Khachanov, Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, and Sebastian Korda, skipped the tournament, with some of them opting to play in Washington.
However, the top players, such as Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Zverev, and others, will play at the event. The German actually compared players choosing the Olympics over regular ATP events with the Wimbledon fiasco a few years ago when the event was stripped of points, and most players still went to the event.
“All the top players went to Wimbledon a few years back, despite having no points on the line. It’s about prestige, it’s not about points or money. It’s about winning these kinds of titles and having medals for your country.”
Certain events, such as Wimbledon and the Olympics, are too prestigious to take anything else above them. Zverev was adamant that he would never choose some regular ATP tournament over the Olympics, even though plenty of his colleagues did.
“That’s what it’s about. I would never choose to play a 500 event over the Olympics. There are no thoughts on that, and I think Washington is going to be quite an interesting 500 event, I would say.”
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