“I would never choose to play a 500 event over the Olympics,” defending gold medalist Alexander Zverev said. Not everyone agrees.
Sometimes, there really is a free lunch—or something very close to it.
One such meal will be served up in a few days’ time in the nation’s capital, at the Mubadala Citi DC Open, an ATP/WTA 500 hard-court tournament contested while the biggest names in tennis fight it out on clay at Roland Garros during the Olympic Games.
Two singles players are going to pick up a wheelbarrow’s worth of rankings points and prize money for electing to spend the week in the steamy mid-Atlantic instead of sweltering Paris.
The top men’s seed in D.C. is likely to be No. 14 Ben Shelton with Grigor Dimitrov’s recent withdrawal, while WTA No. 3 Aryna Sabalenka leads a women’s field with Ons Jabeur next in the pecking order. The top contenders include four Americans who have decided that when it comes to the Olympics, they just aren’t that into it. That cohort is comprised of Shelton, No. 23 Sebastian Korda and No. 29 Frances Tiafoe, along with WTA No. 14 Madison Keys, health permitting.
These are all players who qualified for the Olympics, but decided to take a hard pass. The Games offer neither rankings points nor prize money, while the event in D.C. (as well as some lesser tournaments that run concurrently with the Olympics) offer both. Olympians take a potentially serious hit by passing up the points, money and US Open prep opportunity, but the elite players are competing for historic national and personal glory.
“I would never choose to play a 500 event over the Olympics,” defending Olympic gold medalist Alexander Zverev of Germany told InsideSport during the recent Hamburg tournament. “There are no thoughts on that.”
If it seems like Shelton, Keys and company are also taking food off the table for lower-ranked players by skipping the Olympics, consider this: their decisions enabled Marcos Giron, Chris Eubanks and Emma Navarro to earn a chance to stand on the medal podium due to qualification rules that limit any nation to four players (based on ranking) in either main singles draw.
