November 29, 2024

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The Daily Drill: Olympics update edition

Stephanie Myles 4 months ago 8 min read

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Just five days remain before the Olympic event gets under way in Paris.

And with the updated rankings on Monday, you’d expect the following players to be seeded.

The No. 16 seed should be Canadian Leylah Fernandez, who is currently ranked No. 24 in the world. That means that a third of the top 24 players on the women’s side are not taking part.

Notable that Fernandez got a nice break there; she only squeezed into the last seeded spot in the 56-player draw because of the late withdrawal by Marketa Vondrousova.

Not playing are: [3] Sabalenka, [12] Kasatkina, [13] Samsonova, [14] Keys, [16] Jabeur, [17] Kalinskaya, [18] Vondrousova, [20] Azarenka.

Five of those eight are either Russian or Belarussian.

SEEDED!

On the men’s side, Félix Auger-Aliassime also squeezed into the seedings at No. 16 (Up to No. 15, with Arthur Fils at No. 16, with the withdrawal of Hubert Hurkacz)

He’s ranked No. 19 as of Monday, so there isn’t as much attrition on the men’s side.

Missing are No. 9 Andrey Rublev, No. 10 Grigor Dimitrov and No. 14 Ben Shelton.

The draw is scheduled for Thursday at 11 a.m. Paris time, with the matches beginning on Saturday.

They will use the Dunlop ATP Clay Court Special Select ball (which is not necessarily the one being used at the various tuneup clay-court events).

It’s also not the ball they used last month at Roland Garros, which was a Wilson ball.

Another note: the men’s and women’s doubles won’t have full third sets; they will be match tiebreaks. Which is not a serious state of affairs.

It’s also worth noting that while the draw format is standard (seeds No. 1-4 randomly drawn to be in the same section as seeds No. 13-16 randomly drawn, for example), they will make adjustments as they do, say, at ITF junior events by placing some names depending on country.

Concretely, if there are three or four players from the same country in the singles draws, they will be drawn into different quarters. If there are two, they will be drawn in different halves.

Fans who don’t pay attention to the ITF and the juniors (and have forgotten or never knew about Tokyo) already will have their “fixed!!!” conspiracy theories ready.

The Daily Drill – Monday, July 22, 2024

Vondrousova: Out

On Monday, 2023 Wimbledon champion Vondrousova was the latest to withdraw from the Olympic event.

The official reason was : “health reasons”.

Vondrousova has been up against it this year, although she did have a nice run to the quarterfinals at Roland Garros.

Two weeks before Wimbledon in Berlin, she fell and injured her hip. Although she said leading up to her title defence that she was “feeling good” and that it was “fine”, it clearly wasn’t as she went out to Spanish clay-courter Jessica Bouzas Maneiro in two quick sets.

And so, Katerina Siniakova, who had been slated to just play doubles because of the country limits (only four Czech women could play singles, all ranked higher than her – which is incredible), will also play singles.

Muchova will play doubles with Linda Noskova.

Also out: Hubert Hurkacz

Hurkacz, who injured his knee during a match at Wimbledon against Arthur Fils and had a procedure done a week ago, was always a long shot to make it to Paris.

In the end, he withdrew on Monday.

Just ran out of time.

His withdrawal has implications on the Polish team. As it appears prospective doubles partner Jan Zielinski also won’t be able to compete, because he can’t enter on his own doubles ranking. And that also means there will be no mixed doubles with Iga Swiatek, for either man.

Also out: Soonwoo Kwon

The Korean, whose career-best ranking of No. 52 came in late 2021, has been trying to come back fron injury most of this year.

Kwon was out from Doha in Feb. 2023 to the US Open. After a few matches, including Davis Cup, he played just one match at the Australian Open and one Davis Cup match (both losses) until Indian Wells.

Kwon at the 2023 US Open

He’s been making it to the big events (second round at Roland Garros, first round at Wimbledon). But you get the sense the prize money is a factor there.

Kwon played Hamburg last week, but lost 7-5 in the third to Maximilian Marterer.

And then, he withdrew from the Olympics because of an ankle injury.

In one of those peculiar twists of fate, the player who will replace him in Paris is … Maximilian Marterer.

Marterer isn’t even ranked in the top 100. Which gives you an idea of what the field in Paris will look like. He is the fourth German man in the singles with Alexander Zverev, Jan-Lennard Struff and Dominik Koepfer.

Read us

Rune – Paris question mark?

Already, Holger Rune had issues in Hamburg with his knee.

But he withdrew from Umag on Monday, citing issues with his wrist. He was actually there on site practicing.

Wrists, as we know in tennis, are no joke. And it’s not the first time he’s had issues with it.

Will Rune make his date in Paris? It starts in five days. You’d have to think it’s not looking that great.

Russians as Neutrals – Shnaider and Vesnina

The Russian selection for the Olympic tennis event has not been a smooth process.

A number of players have declined to play for the neutral team (Andrey Rublev, Daria Kasatkina and others). And it’s notable that the tennis players who are playing make up some 20 per cent of the TOTAL of Russian athletes who will be in Paris.

But a couple of later additions, Diana Shnaider and Elena Vesnina, appear to be in a bit of an awkward situation.

Here’s a thread on Vesnina. All of this is mostly social-media likes, and the like. It’s pretty crazy that these things are where we’re going in this very serious situation. But that’s where we are. Especially because athletes might have scrubbed their social media.

The Global Rights Compliance group is tracking this stuff.

Here’s what they’ve listed for those two players.

We’ve already seen that the ITF and IOC’s “vetting” of Russian players to fulfil their “neutrality” requirements is more lip service than anything else.

Should be interesting in the tennis mixed zone – and those of other sports in which Russian and Belarusian athletes are competing.

Davidovich Fokina rises from the injury ashes

(Photo:Tyler Anderson/Tennis Canada)

Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, as the No. 2 player for his country at the Olynpic entry deadline, was nominated to play in Paris.

But two weeks ago, he withdrew from the Games, citing a back injury.

Now, we know how fickle backs are. But Davidovich Fokina has made a rather quick recovery. He has taken a wild card into the Atlanta tournament this week – taking place a week before the Olympics.

He’s the No. 5 seed played Arthur Cazaux in the first round bright and early – first up on Monday. The Spaniard won in straight sets.

Davidovich Fokina also is the top seed in the qualifying next week for the Citi Open in Washington, D.C., which is played the same week as Paris.

He’s in the qualifying likely because he had not entered D.C. in time for the singles entry deadline, so had to enter the qualifying (for which the deadline is two weeks before the tournament). He also could potentially get a main draw wild card.

He’s also straight into Montreal, Cincinnati and the US Open.

It’s not a criticism of any athlete who chooses not to take part in the Olympics. Higher-ranked players than he have taken a pass.

And it’s not because he’s clay-averse; his best career rinning percentage is on clay (although he went 2-5 during this just-completed spring clay-court swing).

It just … is. When you have a wonky back, it’s a choice between going back to clay for one event and then back to the hard courts or trying to keep it consistent when you have at least five tournaments on that surface.

Quadrennial mug-shot follies

It happens every year, partly because, like your passport photo, the Olympics requires athletes to … not smile for their official pics, which must be taken with a white background. Somewhat like a passport photo, although some athletes seem to take those rules with a grain of salt.

But it always produces some seriously laugh-out-loud mug shots.

Félix Auger-Aliassime’s mug is his old ATP Tour shot, back when he was a teenager with pseudo-rapper ambitions.

To wit:

It’s not limited to tennis, that’s for sure.

It’s a feature, not a bug.

It’s also not new this year.

For a look at all of your favorite tennis players at their worst, click here.

From Manhattan to Paris for Osaka

Naomi Osaka, who hasn’t played since Wimbledon, has been busy with off-court things.

She also looks to have been one of the first players on site at Roland Garros, to prepare on the clay.

Practice was officially allowed on site as of last Saturday.

As with most of the players on the women’s side, she’s taken a pass on getting back on the competitive clay match court before the Games.

Final Olympic entries revealed
Djokovic’s Olympics: promise descends into heartbreak

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Stephanie Myles

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