Sports
At the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, tennis is as odd a fit as ever
For many, tennis and the Olympics are an odd combination, and never more so than for the Paris Games in 2024.
A little more than a month after the best tennis players in the world left the red clay of Roland Garros, they are headed right back onto it at a time of year when they are supposed to be getting started on the hard court swing through North America.
A dozen years ago, in the halcyon days of the London Olympics, players basically just moved across town, from Wimbledon to the Olympic Village, then commuted to the All England Club, where the most important tournament had just concluded, for another one. Easy-peasy. Ever since, not so much.
In 2016, the big question ahead of the Rio Games was who wanted to schlep to South America and risk getting Zika, the mosquito-born virus that was on a low-key rage through Brazil. In 2021, dealing with COVID restrictions and testing, and playing in empty stadiums in a climate that felt like the surface of the sun was part of the bargain in Tokyo.
Great Britain’s Andy Murray won his second consecutive Olympic gold at the 2016 Olympics. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
This year, it’s the oddball transition from the slowest surface in tennis (clay) to one of the fastest ones (the grass of Wimbledon) then back to the slow clay, then over to North America’s hard courts for a compressed U.S. Open tune-up run.
This is heaven for a player like Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 and a clay-court savant. She’s probably one of the rare athletes heading to Paris in any sport who can basically drive in and pick up her gold medal. She just doesn’t lose at Roland Garros, where she has won the French Open four of the past five years.
For almost everyone else, it’s complicated.
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Three top Americans, Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda, have all passed. Too much time on the road. Too much hard-court prep work to do ahead of the U.S. Open, which is the most important Grand Slam of the year for many Americans.
Tiafoe, the child of immigrants from Sierra Leone whose love for his country and representing it is deep, said it was a tough call, but not so much because of the tennis tournament, or the chance to win a medal. He’s a basketball nut and thinks this is the only time LeBron James and Stephen Curry will play together in an Olympics.
“That’s going to be iconic,” said Tiafoe, who is confident he will still be good enough to make the team when the Summer Games take place in Los Angeles in four years’ time.
Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, the two-time defending Australian Open champion, and Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, a three-time Grand Slam finalist, have also taken a pass, citing concerns about injuries.
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“I’m really curious how players will play the Olympics and the hard-court season,” said Jabeur, who has been struggling with a knee injury all year, which she could exacerbate by changing surfaces so dramatically. “Honestly, it’s going to be very tough.”
Everyone who passes, though, opens up an opportunity for someone who wouldn’t miss it for the world. Chris Eubanks was sixth on the list of U.S. players eligible to fill one of four U.S. spots in singles. When he got the call-up, he relished the chance to play in a team event but also to soak up the spirit of the Games.
Clay is his worst surface.
“I’ll figure it out,” he said.
The opening ceremony takes place the night before the start of the tennis tournament. He might have to play the next morning.
Japan’s Naomi Osaka lighting the Olympic torch at the 2020 Tokyo Games. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
“Don’t care,” he said. “Not missing that.”
Christian Coleman, the American sprinter, was in Eubanks’ fifth-grade class. They’ve been buddies ever since. Now, they will be Olympians together. Coleman was selected for the U.S. relay squad.
“How cool is that?” he said.
Last week, the International Tennis Federation, which runs the Olympic tournament, bragged that 22 of the top 30 women and men had committed to participating. So has Rafael Nadal, who is going to play doubles with Carlos Alcaraz in what should be one of the showcase events of the Games.
Assuming his knee holds up, Novak Djokovic, who underwent meniscus surgery on June 5 but managed to reach the Wimbledon final, will be there, too. Despite winning 24 Grand Slam titles, Djokovic has never won an Olympic gold medal in four tries. It’s the most surprising hole in his resume. He was the man about the Games in Tokyo, doing splits with gymnasts in the Olympic Village gym, getting loud and rowdy with other Serbian athletes as they watched events together, and posing for selfies with just about anyone.
Novak Djokovic did win an Olympic bronze medal in Beijing in 2008. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
That’s the glass nearly three-quarters full, or is it more than a quarter empty?
Nearly four decades after its return to the Olympic program following a 64-year respite, tennis remains in a bit of an oddball spot at the Games. It features some of the biggest stars in the sport, but a gold medal isn’t looked at with the same luster as a Grand Slam title, unless you are someone like Alexander Zverev or Belinda Bencic, gold medalists who have not won Grand Slam singles titles.
Dave Haggerty, the president of the ITF, said the sport’s reentry into the Olympics has been one of the keys to its growth since 1988. Participation has more than doubled to roughly 100 million players. There are now 213 countries with tennis federations compared with 104 in 1988. Of those, 157 compete in the national team event for men, the Davis Cup, and 138 compete in the women’s Billie Jean King Cup, compared with 51 and fewer than 40 in 1988.
“It’s not a traditional tennis audience,” Haggerty said. “It’s an opportunity for us to get a different audience.”
Just as they did when they draped Wimbledon in pink in 2012, organizers plan to dress up Roland Garros so it doesn’t simply look like a smaller version of the French Open.
They will have to cover up the Rolex signs since Omega is the Olympic sponsor. There is also no electronic line calling, no prize money, and probably more importantly, no rankings points. With no chance to earn rankings points, Denis Shapovalov, the Canadian star trying to work his way back from an injury and desperate to get his ranking back to where he can be seeded for big tournaments, said he had little choice but to skip the Games.
Venus and Serena Williams have won eight Olympic gold medals — and 30 Grand Slam singles titles — between them. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
Haggerty said the purity of competing for a medal and nothing else provides its own quadrennial allure. Easy for him to say — he’s not giving up as much as two weeks’ salary to participate. There is also the draw of the spectacle of the Olympic Games and the break it provides from the hamster wheel of the regular tour. Plenty of players would spend a week competing on gravel if it came with an opportunity to march — or in this case, ride a ferry down the Seine — in the opening ceremony and spend a week living and/or socializing among 10,000 of the best athletes in the world at their chosen pursuits in the Olympic Village.
“Me and Emma already have our plan for trading pins and getting all around the village,” said Danielle Collins, who will team up with Emma Navarro on the American team. “Total bucket list item for me.”
Coco Gauff wants to win a medal but also meet Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast ever, and Sha’Carri Richardson, the gold medal favorite in the 100 meters, and wants to hook up once more with two other American runners, Gabby Thomas and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
It turns out Daniil Medvedev is an Olympics guy, too. “Very easy decision,” he said, claiming he loved the atmosphere in Tokyo, which because of all the COVID restrictions, was probably the worst Summer Olympics atmosphere ever. Given that, Medvedev, a Russian who will compete as a neutral athlete because of his country’s invasion of Ukraine, is going to have himself a time in Paris.
“I know if I’m thinking strictly about my personal career, it’s better to go to Canada, prepare for hard courts,” Medvedev said last week. “When I’m 40, if I can say I played in Tokyo Olympics, Paris Olympics, Los Angeles Olympics, I had a lot of fun in my life, my career, I’m going to be happy.”
Alcaraz, who turned 21 in May, is practically frothing at the mouth to play in his first Olympic Games. He said he is going to “give 100 percent for my country,” and then figure out what his pre-U.S. Open schedule will look like.
“I have to think about it,” he said.
He will have plenty of fellow players to consult.
(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photo: Abbie Parr / Getty Images)
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The Atlanta Falcons did not have to do much thinking about their future when their season ended Sunday.
The team did not even wait for Black Monday, as it fired head coach Raheem Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot on Sunday night.
The Falcons hired Morris ahead of the 2024 season, selecting him over candidates such as Bill Belichick, Mike Vrabel, Jim Harbaugh, Mike Macdonald and Ben Johnson.
Atlanta Falcons head coach Raheem Morris on the sideline against the New Orleans Saints in the second quarter at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. (Brett Davis/Imagn Images)
But Morris’ results were not what the Falcons wanted, going 8-9 in back-to-back seasons.
“I have great personal affinity for both Raheem and Terry and appreciate their hard work and dedication to the Falcons, but I believe we need new leadership in these roles moving forward,” owner Arthur Blank said in a statement. “The decision to move away from people who represent the organization so well and have a shared commitment to the values that are important to the organization is not an easy one, but the results on the field have not met our expectations or those of our fans and leadership. I wish Raheem and Terry the absolute best in their future pursuits.”
Wildly enough, the team’s record is the same as the division champion Carolina Panthers’, so the Falcons were just one win away from making the playoffs for the first time since the 2017 season. One of those losses was to the New York Jets, who would have had the first pick in 2026 instead of the second if that game’s result had been reversed.
Atlanta wound up winning their final four games, but it was not enough for them, or Morris and Fontenot.
Atlanta Falcons head coach Raheem Morris on the sideline against the Miami Dolphins in the first quarter at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Oct. 26, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Brett Davis/Imagn Images)
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Morris previously served as the Los Angeles Rams’ defensive coordinator, winning a Super Bowl with them. He held numerous roles with the Falcons before going to Los Angeles, including serving as their interim head coach in 2020.
Morris initially replaced Arthur Smith, who served as the team’s head coach for three seasons. Smith is now the offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who would make the playoffs with a win Sunday night against the Baltimore Ravens.
Perhaps the Falcons are kicking themselves for choosing Morris over several others. Vrabel won the AFC East in his first season with the New England Patriots, Johnson won the NFC North in his first year with the Chicago Bears, and Harbaugh is back in the playoffs with the Los Angeles Chargers.
Atlanta Falcons head coach Raheem Morris, center, stands with his team while wearing an Apalachee High School T-shirt after a recent school shooting there before an NFL football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
There should be several names available to the Falcons, who are desperate to make the most of Michael Penix Jr., who will enter his third NFL season in September.
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DENVER — The game was the understudies versus the underwhelmings.
The second-string Chargers against the … wait a second, the top-seeded Denver Broncos only generated 240 yards and failed to score an offensive touchdown?
Such is the AFC this season, filled with teams who flash one week and fizzle the next.
Sunday’s regular-season finale — which the Broncos won, 19-3 — was far more competitive than it should have been, especially considering the lopsided incentives.
Whereas the Chargers were playing for pride and only modestly consequential postseason seeding, Denver’s stakes were two miles high: a free pass to the second round, and home-field advantage until the Super Bowl.
How unsettling that the Chargers could even make the game interesting, having rested 14 starters, including Pro Bowl quarterback Justin Herbert.
The Chargers now turn their attention to a first-round game at the 14-win New England Patriots, who have averaged 34.4 points in the five games since the beginning of December, on Sunday at 5 p.m. PST.
It’s another opportunity for Herbert to notch his first playoff victory. In his six seasons, the Chargers have had two one-and-done appearances — an epic collapse at Jacksonville in the 2022 season and a four-interception loss at Houston last season.
“With the way he’s played this season, this could be a breakthrough,” receiver Keenan Allen said. “Everything we want is still right in front of us.”
Chargers tight end Oronde Gadsden II catches a pass against Denver Broncos safety P.J. Locke during the first half Sunday.
(David Zalubowski / Associated Press)
That’s not exactly true. Allen reeled in two hefty items on his wish list. He needed nine more receiving yards for a $250,000 contract bonus, and six more receptions for a $750,000 payout. He finished with seven catches for 36 yards — jackpot!
“It’s nice to get that out of the way,” he said, smiling broadly.
Allen was one of the few seasoned Chargers veterans to set foot on the field. Watching from the sidelines were offensive starters Herbert, Ladd McConkey, Quentin Johnston and the entire starting offensive line.
So backup quarterback Trey Lance, making a rare start, had a collection of blockers that was even more hodgepodge than usual — and going up against the NFL’s sack leaders, no less. The Broncos came into the game with a club-record 64 sacks.
They got to Lance four times, and although that might be impressive, the Chargers collected four sacks of their own, two by backup defensive lineman Otito Ogbonnia.
“That was dope,” star edge rusher Khalil Mack said of the performance by second-stringers.
Mack sat out, as did All-Pro safety Derwin James Jr., linebacker Daiyan Henley and safety Elijah Molden. All will be back for the Patriots game.
The Chargers have beaten the Patriots in their last two meetings, including a 6-0 win two years ago in Foxborough. This is the first time the teams have played with these head coaches, Jim Harbaugh and Mike Vrabel.
“That’s the kind of game that defines your season,” Harbaugh said. “Our focus and attention is on that.”
Sunday’s game was a foregone conclusion before kickoff. Yes, the Chargers were 5-0 against AFC West opponents, but their primary aim was to stay fresh for the playoffs.
The Broncos, meanwhile, were so laser-focused on securing that No. 1 seed that coach Sean Payton instructed the videoboard operators to scrap the goofy games during breaks in the action. He wanted the crowd thinking about decibels, not distractions.
Denver running back RJ Harvey is tackled by Chargers defenders during the second half Sunday.
(C. Morgan Engel / Getty Images)
From the start, Denver looked on track. On their first possession, the Broncos drove from their 13 to the Chargers’ six, setting up the first of four field goals by Wil Lutz.
Who would have suspected that, after those 81 yards, Denver’s offense would generate only 31 more the rest of the half?
Put simply, Denver is a weird team. The Broncos have trailed in 12 of their 14 wins, and this was the second time this season they won without scoring an offensive touchdown. Naturally, there were incentives Sunday to staying as vanilla as possible on offense as not to reveal more to future opponents, although this is a team that already has put 17 games on video.
This game was either an offensive stinker or a defensive masterpiece, depending on your perspective.
Both quarterbacks led their team in rushing. Lance completed 20 of 44 passes for 136 yards with an interception. Denver’s Bo Nix was 14 of 23 for 141 yards.
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Top Milwaukee Brewers prospect Frank Cairone was hospitalized after being involved in a serious car accident near his New Jersey home on Friday, the team announced.
“Frank is currently being cared for at a hospital in New Jersey with the support of his family,” read a statement from the team, via MLB.com. “The Brewers’ thoughts and prayers are with Frank and his family during his difficult time.”
Pitcher Frank Cairone (left) with Green Valley High School (NV) infielder Caden Kirby during the MLB Draft Combine high school baseball game at Chase Field. (Mark J. Rebilas/Imagn Images)
The left-handed pitcher turned 18 this past September. He was drafted out of Delsea Regional High School in Franklinville, N.J. at No. 68 overall in the 2025 Draft.
News of the Brewers’ young prospect’s accident came shortly after the team announced it was not in contact with several players in Venezuela after U.S. military strikes in the country and the capture of its President Nicolás Maduro.
MLB TEAM UNAWARE OF STATUS OF PLAYERS IN VENEZUELA AFTER US MILITARY STRIKES
Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio (11) is seen before the fifth inning of an MLB game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Toronto Blue Jays on August 31, 2025, at Rogers Centre in Toronto, ON. (Mathew Tsang/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold revealed the team is unaware of the status of the players in a statement Saturday.
“We don’t have much info at the moment but are trying to follow up,” Arnold said, via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We know the airports have been shut down but not much beyond that.”
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Pitcher Frank Cairone during the MLB Draft Combine high school baseball game at Chase Field. (Mark J. Rebilas/Imagn Images)
The team’s players in Venezuela include star outfielder Jackson Chourio, infielder Andruw Monasterio and catcher Jeferson Quero, according to the outlet.
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