By HOWARD FENDRICH, AP Tennis Writer
PARIS (AP) — All the way back when he first discussed the likelihood that 2024 would be his final season as a professional tennis player, Rafael Nadal made sure to refer to the Paris Olympics as “one of the important competitions I would like to be at.”
If, indeed, this is his last hurrah, and if, indeed, he does make it to the Summer Games a little more than a year after hip surgery — neither of which is an absolute certainty — it would be fitting that the site of the French Open is also the site of this goodbye.
No event, at least in this sport, defines an athlete’s legacy the way the clay-court Grand Slam tournament does for Nadal. And the opposite is true, too, which is why there is a statue of the 38-year-old Spaniard at Roland Garros, the site of a record 14 of his 22 major trophies and where the Olympic tennis matches begin on July 27.
Nadal skipped Wimbledon in order to avoid going from clay to grass and back to clay at the Paris Games, where he has been planning to team in doubles with Carlos Alcaraz, the 21-year-old coming off back-to-back major titles at Roland Garros and the All England Club.
And even though the idea that Nadal could add to his gold medals — in singles at Beijing in 2008, and in doubles with Marc López at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 — seems far-fetched, just the sight of him back in Paris will mean a lot to him and his fans.
“My body has been a jungle for two years. You don’t know what to expect,” said Nadal, who has been able to play only 16 matches since the start of last year, going 8-8, including a first-round loss at the French Open this May. “I wake up one day and I (felt like I had) a snake biting me. Another day, a tiger.”
Another popular, and successful, figure in men’s tennis whose body has let him down lately, Andy Murray of Britain, says this Olympics will mark his adieu.
The 37-year-old Murray, a three-time Slam champion, is the only athlete with two singles golds in the sport — from London in 2012 and Rio four years later. After having hip replacement surgery in 2019, and various other injuries more recently, he withdrew from singles at Wimbledon because he needed a procedure to remove a cyst from his spine last month.
“It’s great that they’ll be at the Olympics one last time. Any chance to see those guys on a court again should be celebrated,” U.S. coach Bob Bryan said. “They’re both working through tough times with injuries, but they’re showing that resilience and that will to fight and be on the court.”
While Murray and Nadal both own golds, the best of the best in tennis do not always leave an Olympics with the top prizes.
Novak Djokovic of Serbia, for example, will be trying to fill that one gap on his otherwise-impeccable resume, which includes 24 Grand Slam trophies and more weeks at No. 1 in the rankings than anyone.
Also eyeing a first gold will be such stars of the sport as Iga Swiatek of Poland, who has won the French Open four of the past five years, and Coco Gauff of the United States, the reigning U.S. Open champion and runner-up to Swiatek at Roland Garros in 2022.
She missed out on the Tokyo Olympics three years ago because she tested positive for COVID-19 right before she was supposed to travel to Japan.
“I’ve been trying to put myself in the mindset of just enjoying the experiences,” Gauff said, “because you’re only going to have your first Olympics once.”
As a sport with plenty of prizes on offer nearly every week, and four Grand Slam events per year, tennis does not place the same emphasis on the Olympics as sports such as athletics, gymnastics and swimming do. So some of the most accomplished and high-ranked athletes will be skipping Paris.
That includes Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, a two-time Australian Open champion who is No. 3 in the world, two-time Wimbledon runner-up Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, and Americans such as Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe, who were semifinalists in recent years at the U.S. Open. The year’s last Slam starts less than a month after the Olympics end.
“You’ve got to look big picture. U.S. Open is right there. It’s going to be super hot this summer. I just kind of want to be there, practicing in that. And I care way more about the Open and being as prepared for the Open as possible,” Tiafoe said. “That was kind of it.”
