Tennis was contested at every Olympic Games from 1896 through 1924 as a regular medal sport. It was then discontinued, although it was on the schedule as a demonstration sport in 1968 and 1984. Tennis returned as a full medal sport in 1988, after full-time professionals were allowed to compete at the Olympics. Unlike previous editions of tennis at the Olympics, it was decided that the events in Rio would not qualify for ATP and WTA ranking points. This remained the case at Tokyo 2020.
Up to 2008, four events were contested: men’s and women’s singles and men’s and women’s doubles, but since 2012 there has also been a mixed doubles event. The 2020 events were held at the Ariake Tennis Park at Koto-ku, Tokyo. The park opened in 1983 and, in 1987, the main court (centre court) in the Ariake Coliseum opened. It has played host to the Japan Open ever since. It is a hardcourt, and has a seating capacity of 10,000 over three floors. A retractable roof was added in 1991. In addition to international tennis events, the Coliseum has also hosted BJ League basketball matches, concerts, and martial arts competitions, amongst other events.
All five tennis events in 2020 were single elimination contests and each event saw the players seeded to prevent players of the same ability being drawn against other in the early part of the competition. Each country was allowed six players per gender. The singles tournaments were scheduled for 64 players, the doubles for 32 pairs, and the mixed doubles for 16 pairs.
The 64 entrants in the two singles events were made up of the top 56 ranked players on both the ATP and WTA ranking lists published on 14 June 2021. The International Tennis Federation assigned two quota places and six wildcard entries for each singles tournament. The ranking lists also established the first 24 doubles entrants, with eight wildcards then being awarded. A maximum of four single’s players and two doubles pairs, for each gender, were allowed to participate per country. For the mixed doubles, only players who already played in the singles or doubles tournament were permitted to participate.
All matches were the best of three sets including, for the first time since 1904, the men’s singles final, which had previously been the best of five sets. The tie-break continued to operate in every set, including the final set. At Rio in 2016, however, the third set in the mixed doubles was played as a match tie-break (first to 10 points), and this rule was extended to all doubles in Tokyo.
With Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer out of the men’s singles, the way was clear for Novak Đoković to win his first Olympic gold medal. He was cruising, and had not lost a set on his way to the semi-final, but then came unstuck against Germany’s Alexander Zverev, who beat the Serbian and then went on to win the gold medal. The women’s singles also provided a surprise winner in Belinda Bencic of Switzerland, after the strong favourites Ash Barty of Australia and Japan’s Naomi Osaka were both eliminated before the quarter-final stage.
There was no surprise in the men’s doubles as the number one seeds Nikola Mektić and Mate Pavić won the all-Croatian final against Marin Čilić and Ivan Dodig. Marcus Daniell and Michael Venus won the bronze medal, which was the first ever tennis medal for New Zealand. The top seeds in the women’s doubles, Barbora Krejčíková and Kateřina Siniaková of the Czech Republic, also won gold, beating the Swiss pair Bencic and Viktorija Golubic and thus prevented the singles champion from winning two golds at the Games. She was however, the only person, male or female, to win two medals in Tokyo.
Like the singles, Novak Đoković cruised to the semi-finals in the mixed doubles with Nina Stojanović and, also like the singles, he went out at that same stage of the competition, before withdrawing from the bronze medal match with an injury. The gold medal was won by the fourth seeds Anastasiya Pavlyuchenkova and Andrey Rublyov of the ROC. This medal made the ROC the most successful tennis nation at the Games with one gold and two silvers.
France’s Gaël Monfils and Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina were hoping to make the 2020 Olympics a double event because they got married the week before the Games. Svitolina won a bronze medal in the singles.
