[edit] Olympic Tennis: Not Worth The Trouble?

The top tennis pros are split on whether the Olympics is worth playing. Gustavo Kuerten, Monica Seles, Lindsay Davenport, and the Williams sisters look forward to it enthusiastically, but opting to skip this Olympics are many of tennis's other big stars, including Pete Sampras, Martina Hingis, Anna Kournikova, Mary Pierce, and rising star Jan-Michael Gambill. Defending gold medalist Andre Agassi had been eager to play, but has withdrawn due to concurrent illness of his sister and mother. Other players withdrawing late, many of them citing injuries, include Nicolas Lapentti, Andrei Medvedev, Marc Rosset, Sebastien Grosjean, Anke Huber, Patty Schnyder, Nathalie Tauziat, and Sandrine Testud.

The big names who chose early to skip the Sydney Olympics say it's too close to the US Open and too far away from home. The tennis event runs Sept. 19-28, starting only nine days after the US Open, and Australia is a long enough trip that for most of Australian Open history, it was the only Grand Slam that would often be skipped by a significant number of top pros.

Pete Sampras adds a third reason he won't play: "It's a 128-draw. We play that all year around. If we have more of a team concept, like the World Team Cup, that's more (with) the Olympic spirit." His comments reflect a fairly widespread feeling that Olympic tennis is in a kind of "no man's land" between the tennis world and Olympic tradition. In explaining her decision not to play, Martina Hingis commented, "It's more history behind the Grand Slam tournaments. They've always been there. Tennis in the Olympics has only been played three times so far."

Hingis is slightly inaccurate. Olympic tennis has been played three times since its reintroduction in 1988, but it was part of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and continued through 1924. A large part of what kept tennis out of the Olympics between 1924 and 1988 was the difficulty of excluding professional players under the amateurism requirement, which is now defunct.

Sampras's comment is a little misleading, too. The singles competitions have 64 players each, the doubles draws each have 32 teams.

In the current rules, men's teams can have six players, four of them in singles, and women's teams four players, three in singles. Player invitations are based on the rankings as of July 10. The U.S. men's team, coached by Stan Smith, will have singles players Michael Chang, Todd Martin, Jeff Tarango, and, replacing Agassi, Vince Spadea. Taking the doubles spots are Alex O'Brien and Jared Palmer. The U.S. women will be coached by Billie Jean King. Lindsay Davenport (the defending gold medalist), Monica Seles, and Venus Williams will play singles. Serena Williams will play doubles with Venus.

Lindsay Davenport's father played for the U.S. Olympic volleyball team in 1968. She holds her Olympic gold among her most important accomplishments. Monica Seles also competed in 1996 and says she likes the "totally different feeling" of Olympic competition.

Davenport is the top seed in the women's draw, followed by Venus Williams, then Seles at number three, making for something of a U.S. "dream team." The top men's seed is Marat Safin, fresh off his brilliant U.S. Open win, followed by Gustavo Kuerten, then Magnus Norman.

The men's doubles competition will feature the two most successful pairs of recent years. Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi will put aside the differences that separated them for the last year to try to win for India, but they'll have to get by top-seeded Australians Mark Woodforde and Todd Woodbridge. "The Woodies" will have the advantage, having won both the French Open and Wimbledon this year, a feat accomplished by the Indian team the year before. Paes and Bhupathi also made it to the Australian and U.S. finals in 1999, but they'll have to work hard to recapture that form after a year apart.

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