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The 2028 Summer Olympics are still three years out – 1128 days, according to the soon-to-be worn out countdown clock on the official website.

But LA28 released its competition schedule today. Which makes it a good time to look at the effects wreaked upon the summer tennis schedule by the Olympics every four years.

So while it’s far too soon to even speculate on who will play, who are the favorites and all the usual debates, it’s not too soon to analyze what incalculable debris it will leave in its wake during the 2028 summer hard-court season.

That’s especially so because the 2028 Olympic tennis schedule, as it stands, extends over two weeks. So while the Olympics always create havoc with the summer season, this is a perfect storm of disaster.

Overlap over two weeks

***Unlike many of the previous editions of the Olyumpic tennis event, the 2028 edition in Los Angeles sprawls over two separate tournament schedule weeks.***

The schedule of events has the tennis starting on Wednesday, July 19 2028, and wrapping up on Friday, July 28.

That’s already different from recent previous Olympics, where the tournament was essentially held over one tournament calendar week – with a two-day spillover on the previous weekend, when only the final few players who intended to compete at the Games were still in action.

This time, it starts in the middle of a week – on the Wednesday – and ends the Friday of the following week. So instead of compromising one week of the ATP and WTA Tour schedules, it will compromise two.

Late in the yearly cycle

The tennis calendar doesn’t change much from year to year – especially for the majors – although in recent years with the United Cup added to the Australian swing, it has started earlier.

So it’s not rocket science to figure out when things are supposed to be. To make the math simple, you start with the fact that Labour Day MUST fall in halfway through the US Open, and work back from there.

But it’s cyclical, because the number of days in the year isn’t perfectly divisible by seven. And of course there’s leap year.

***Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova competes in Rio – back when Russians could wave their own flag.***

The cycle starts at its latest, and gets one day earlier for about five more years … until it resets and starts at its latest again. For example, the Australian Open can finish as early as Jan. 26 (2014) and as late as Feb. 2 (2020), even though all those days fall on a Sunday.

So what’s happening in 2028? Well, it’s about as late as it can be.

Wimbledon, unless something drastically changes, would be held from July 3-16, 2028.

With Labour Day falling on Sept. 4, the US Open will be held from Aug. 28 – Sept. 10.

That cuts an entire week off the typical nine-week period between the start of the former and the end of the latter.

It might have happened with the 2012 Olympics as well. With the current schedule, it wouldn’t have finished until July 15. But Wimbledon was only pushed back a week (to make a three-week gap between it and Roland Garros) in 2015.

Expanded Canada and Cincy off in ’28

***The expansion of the Canadian and Cincinnati tournaments in 2025 will mean a whole lot of logistical scrambling in 2028, the next Olympic year.***

What else?

Add in newly expanded 96-player draws and 12-day schedules at the big 1000 tournaments in Canada and Cincinnati – which have already led to one casualty in the death of the Atlanta Open and a less-than-optimal July start to the Canadian event – and you have another issue.

Those tournaments, as you can see below in the historical schedules, were one week each. As of this year, and going forward, those two tournaments will require three weeks instead of two.

One thing that might help is if the two tournaments revert to the old one-week formula for Olympic years. That could bee the plan – although it’s barely a one-sentence mention, a throwaway line at the tail end of the National Bank Open information on the expansion, and nowhere to be found in terms of the announcements for the Cincinnati tournament. So a lot can happen in the interim.

If it happens, it might help out the Citi Open in D.C.

But in short, given how late Wimbledon is scheduled to finish, it will be straight from the grass to L.A.

What does all this mean, you ask?

Well, as much as a scramble as it is every Olympic year – Open Court remembers literally RUNNING in the Toronto airport in 2016, trying to change terminals and connect from Montreal to Rio, and barely making the 11-hour flight. Petra Kvitova and Barbora Strycova, who were also coming from the Montreal tournament, were sprinting along with me. And it wasn’t optional; there was a shortage of flights and had we missed it, we might not have been able to get down there for at least five more days.

***Barbora Strycova barely made her flight to Rio to complete in the Olympics, but it worked out.***

The fabulous Citi Open in D.C. always seems to get the short end of the scheduling stick. It was scheduled the same week as Beijing, Rio and Paris.

But this time, it’s serious.

According to our calculations (with sincere hope we didn’t miss anything), here’s how it would look.

July 16 – Wimbledon ends
July 19 – The tennis event begins in Los Angeles
July 28 – The tennis events ends in Los Angeles
July 31 – The schedule is still up in the air – the next three weeks could go D.C. (and perhaps a clay-court event or two), then Canada, and Cincinnati on the reduced one-week Olympic year schedule. But that’s unclear.

It completely crushes that post-Wimbledon clay-court swing. Which might not matter to you, or to most of the top players who take a break after Wimbledon. But it’s a lifeblood for a TON of players.

If the 2028 tennis calendar resembles this year’s, the following tournaments are either completely out of luck, or will find it impossible to get most of the top 100 players if they take place during the Games.

Perhaps a couple might be able to run as normal the week after the Olympics.

– ATP Bastad
– ATP Gstaad
– ATP Los Cabos
– WTA Hamburg
– WTA Iasi
– ATP Kitzbuhel
– ATP Umag
– WTA Prague
– ATP/WTA Washington, D.C.

Now, the Tours are more than aware of this. No doubt they’re trying to work on solutions as we speak.

We’ll keep you posted if we hear anything.