Marton Vosovic had to give up the Olympic tennis competition due to an injury. He was not more likely in his first match, but in men’s tennis, the paper form was almost not prevalent during the Olympics. Men’s world leaders have consistently failed in the history of Olympic tennis competitions.
After a 64-year hiatus, tennis returned to the Olympics in 1988, and its weight is evidenced by the fact that tennis players wore their country’s flag multiple times at the opening. At the last Olympic Games in Rio, world leader Novak Djokovic was forced to bid farewell to the first round, after he was ousted by Argentine Juan Martin del Potro, who at that time ranked 141st in the world rankings. Prior to that, Roger Federer was the first to “only” win a silver medal in London in 2012, although he had become the first world champion at Wimbledon three weeks before the tournament. Moreover, he came out of exactly Murray who smoothly beat him in front of him at Wimbledon, at the same place in London.
At the time of Rafael Nadal’s win in Beijing in 2008, Federer was also a leader on the leaderboard and thus was also number one, but only made it to the quarter-finals where he bid farewell to seventh star, James Blake. Federer was also the world leader during the 2004 Athens Games, but was eliminated in the second round, defeating Thomas Berdycci, the 79th least likely world leader. The later gold medalist also has a Hungarian side, as he is of Hungarian descent through his mother Nicholas Maso from Chile. Maso never reached the ninth highest place in the world rankings, and was able to win the tenth place at the Athens Olympics.
The 2000 Sydney Games also won 10th place then Yevgeny Kafelnikov, and the first player to appear was Marat Safin who had already said goodbye in the first round. In 1996, Andre Agassi, seventh in the world rankings at the time, won Atlanta, and world leader Pete Sampras did not start. The 1992 Barcelona Olympics has so far been the only place where an unrivaled competitor has won, the Swiss Marc Rosset, who was 44th in the world rankings at the time. 1st place Jim Courier and 3rd place Pete Sampras qualified for the third round, and second place finisher Stefan Edberg said goodbye in the first round, so this tournament had the least paper shape.
The most paper-like result to date was the 1988 Seoul Olympics, where the top three winners shared medals, albeit not in the order in which they stood out: bronze Edberg in first, silver Mayotte in second and Messr in third winning a gold medal.
This year, of course, the first new Wimbledon winner, Djokovic, is the best chance, his real chance may be to break the bad luck in chasing the best Olympics in the world. Especially since the other two legends, Spain’s Nadal and Switzerland’s Federer, were forced to skip the race due to injury. Djokovic’s main rival may be Russia’s second-placed Daniil Medvedev, who started with a victory over Kazakhstan’s Bublik. American men’s tennis will likely continue to be beaten, with 54th-ranked Tommy Pool likely taking over their opponent. Among the women, the paper form has already been scrapped, with new Wimbledon champion Australian Barty, who was spotlighted in first place, forced to bid farewell in the first round, against Spain’s No. 46 Sorribes Tormo in the rankings.
