Tennis at the Olympics
Tennis at the Olympics has a rich history. It has been popularized by some of the game’s most famous players. Among them are Rafael Nadal, Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf, Venus Williams, and Novak Djokovic. This year, 188 players will compete in five events in Tokyo.
Cori Gauff is the youngest women’s tennis Olympian
Cori “Coco” Gauff is a professional tennis player who started playing at age seven. At the age of 15, she won a wild card to Wimbledon, where she beat five-time champion Venus Williams in the first round. In 2019, she reached the third round at the U.S. Open and won her first singles title. In 2021, she reached the quarterfinals at the French Open. In June of the same year, she was named to the U.S. Olympic team. However, she was banned from playing for a period of time after testing positive for the performance-enhancing drug Covid-19.
Otto Froitzheim was a tennis player at the Olympics
A German professional tennis player, Froitzheim was born on 24 April 1884 and competed in international competition for Germany. Froitzheim won several international championships and won a silver medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics. He also won the World Hard Court Championships in Saint-Cloud in 1912. In 1912, he reached the quarterfinals of the Olympics and beat compatriot Oscar Kreuzer in four sets, but lost in the finals to the Australian Norman Brookes.
Helen Wills won seven U.S. singles titles
In the 1920s, Helen Wills was one of the most famous women in the United States. She was also the subject of a sculpture by the famous wire artist Alexander Calder. Charlie Chaplin said that watching Wills play tennis was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She was so good at tennis that some women decided to copy her appearance and adopted her trademark white eye shade.
Vincent Richards won the last gold medal in Men’s singles before tennis was expelled from the Olympics
Vincent Richards was born in Yonkers, New York, twenty miles from the U.S. National Championships, and was the first male player to win the Men’s Singles Championship in the Olympics. He won it with Bill Tilden in 1918, and was known as “The Boy Wonder of Tennis.” Richards’ fast tennis skills and uncanny volleying prowess led him to win dozens of tennis tournaments. His feats in doubles were also legendary. Richards and his partner Frank Hunter won the Men’s Doubles finals in 1924, and he won the mixed doubles silver with Marion Zinderstein Jessup.
Men’s doubles
Croatia’s Nikola Mekti and Mate Pavi won the gold medal in Men’s Doubles tennis at the 2020 Summer Olympics. They beat compatriots Marin ili and Ivan Dodig in the final.
Mixed doubles
The mixed doubles curling tournament took place at the Beijing National Aquatics Center in 2022. Ten nations competed in a round-robin preliminary round, and the top four countries qualified for the medal round.
