Does tennis deserve its place at the Olympics?

Does tennis deserve its place at the Olympics?

Most of the world's top players are in Beijing, but should the Olympics be a tournament they are desperate to win?

A quick quiz question, no conferring: can you name two of the five men's Olympic tennis champions since the sport returned to the games in 1988? [* See answers below]

The list is a scruffy straggle of the mercurial and the faceless, with only one true great, Andre Agassi, who won in Atlanta in 1996.

With the grand slams - not the Olympics - being what really matter, players have often approached the games the way most of us treat a company away-day: as an annoying, although sometimes exuberant, diversion from the day job.

Examples abound. In 1992 only one of the top 10 seeds reached the second round; in 1996 Pete Sampras, Michael Chang and Boris Becker didn't bother to play; in 2004 Roger Federer was knocked out in the first round by Tomas Berdych, then an unknown 18-year-old Czech. No wonder some have questioned tennis's value to the Olympics.

This week, however, tennis has fought back - with Federer leading the charge. "Winning [in Beijing] would mean as much to me as a Wimbledon victory," he insisted today. "It's right up there with the grand slams."

There was a lighter touch too, as Federer revealed what the Olympics had already brought him. "Meeting my girlfriend at the Olympics eight years ago was definitely a highlight of my career," he said. "And carrying the flag [in Athens] was a different highlight. Which was better? Well, we've been together for eight years, while the flag was only there for 10 minutes, so I guess it's her."

When the laughs had subsided, Federer pointed out that 17 of the top 20 men are playing in Beijing and insisted that "the players are all excited" about what lies ahead.

The organisations have done their bit too, with the ATP and WTA tours both offering ranking points for the first time at the Olympics (although a gold medal will earn Federer fewer points than a Masters Series win) and the ITF pointing out that, since tennis's reintroduction to the games in 1988, 58 countries have joined their ranks.

It's progress, to be sure. But Lleyton Hewitt probably best summed up the players' mindset best when he said: "Tennis should be in the Olympics. [But] we have four major grand slams in a year - for other athletes here it is almost do or die. We will give it all we have got, but in two weeks' time there is the US Open."

So a question: how can we make Olympic tennis do or die, to make players care? One solution might be to play the Davis and Hopman Cups at the games during Olympic years, in the hope that a team contest would ignite the fire and passions. Another would be to push the US Open back by a week so that there would be no excuses in players missing out.

Or perhaps we should accept that tennis - along with sports like football and baseball, where World Cups and World Series matter more than gold medals - has its place, but just not at the Olympic games?

* The full of list of recent men's Olympic champions: Miroslav Mecir in 1988, Marc Rosset in 1992, Andre Agassi in 1996, Yevgeny Kafelnikov in 2000 and Nicolas Massu in 2004.
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