Are WTF and Olympic Gold in singles equallly relevant?

Are WTF and Olympic Gold in singles equallly relevant?

  • No way.

  • Yes way!

Results are only viewable after voting.
Mainad said:
Sounds as if Sport is saying that, while not in any way diminishing the importance of the WTF, winning an Olympic title is maybe a bit more special because the opportunity to do so is much rarer than the opportunity to win a WTF title.
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It is special, yes, because the opportunity doesn't come often. Is it tougher in terms of the actual field ? No. It is just like a M1000 except for the final.

WTF is that much harder to win because of who you face : top 8 players. No cakewalk draws whatsoever.
 
sbengte said:
It is special, yes, because the opportunity doesn't come often. Is it tougher in terms of the actual field ? No. It is just like a M1000 except for the final.
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But the format of the final (best of 5 sets) is what makes it that bit more special than a Masters 1000 and maybe even a WTF final (both best of 3).

sbengte said:
WTF is that much harder to win because of who you face : top 8 players. No cakewalk draws whatsoever.
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That's very true and is indeed what makes the WTF uniquely important.
 
Tommy Haas said:
For someone like Federer and Nadal having an Olympic gold is important on their resume because they transcend tennis. For lesser players who've won gold like Massu or Rosset, it's not so much because no known ones who the hell they are. Whether it means more than a WTF, that depends and has to be taken in context. Fed has plenty of WTF titles and I think would trade a few for an Olympic gold in singles. Nadal doesn't have any WTF, but I highly doubt would trade it and since he still has a couple good years left, it's too soon to pose that question. Whereas Federer's 2020 chances are pretty much nill with him being 39 by then and all the other top players striving for it and national glory.
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Both of them transcend tennis with their whole careers, not with the winning of the odd tournament.


Slightly D1 said:
Are you a slow person? It isn't something to be objectively judged on but it is clearly a lot more important to the players themselves.
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The impact of a tournament on someone's legacy is not based on how he judges that tournament.

Moreover, the judgement of the players about the emotional value of the succeeding at the Olympics has little to do with the difficulty of winning the tournament, but rather with the prospect of putting their country on the map of the world.

That is in stark contrast with when they compete in the biggest tennis tournaments, where the emotions are based on the effort required to succeed.

I know what is a truer representation of personal emotion and most rational people do as well.

No amount of bragging about uniqueness of the olympic tennis tournament will change that.

:cool:
 
Gold is harder to win for the very best as there are just so few chances and no best of 5. The differing surfaces open the medals up to more players too.

Purely as an achievement in terms of tennis I would rate them roughly equally.
 
It's an interesting one because the Olympics are not the pinnacle of tennis whereas they are for most Olympic sports barring a few others. For that reason, I can understand why some would say tennis should be pulled from the Olympics altogether.
Having said that, with former winners such as Nadal, Serena, Graf, Murray etc it's easy to see why it's now considered so prestigious. Interestingly 2024 will be the 2nd time in the past 4 editions where the tennis event at the Olympics will be held at a Grand Slam venue. I think this kind of makes it more special knowing the players are using the facilities of such a historic venue. Serena winning at Wimbledon and Murray winning his gold at home at Wimbledon were both very apt.
Personally I'd value the Olympics over the WTF simply because of the status of an Olympic gold in general but also because a top player may play the Olympics 3x in their career and they may play the WTF 10+ times. I appreciate the fact WTF is the top 8 players with huge points and prize money at stake but there is still something so special about the Olympics to me. I am really excited to see RG on the calendar 2x this year.
 
I watch the ATP Finals every year - probably watch 80% of the matches. I’ve watched only two or three Olympic matches in 35 years - all from when they played at Wimbledon in 2012. Otherwise, it has never seemed like a tennis event worth staying up late or waking up early to watch and when they played it in the US in 1996, Olympic tennis wasn’t a serious sport. Maybe because it lacks tradition, tennis is not what I want to watch when I spend time watching any Olympic event - more likely to watch swimming, track and field etc. once every four years rather than any of the team events.

I think the more nationalistic you are, you might like playing and watching team events more - many tennis players seem to love playing Davis Cup and the Olympics. For me, I think of tennis as an individual sport and have never been a fan who watches the team events much.
 
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ATP sets the value of an OGM to zero, since they award no ranking points for the achievement. However, an undefeated YEC winner is awarded 1500 points.

Do the math.
 
Tennis, like golf, skateboarding, snowboarding, mountain biking and the host of other ridiculous sports/hobbies/idle past times that are now part of the Olympic Games are the reason it’s easy to miss it. Winter or summer, all the same.

The shark called and wants his jump back.
 
Olympics with Best-of-5-sets-final is more relevant than the WTF.
 
Sport said:
Current prestige among players: Some players like Steffi Graf, Serena Williams, Agassi, Djokovic or Murray say the Olympic Gold Medal in singles is so prestigious or even more than a GS.
Source:
http://www.letsecondserve.com/2012/07/olympics-or-slams-whats-more-important.html
http://www.worldtennismagazine.com/archives/8213
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very few players will be dumb enough to say out loud that the Olympics means nothing to them. making such a claim is bad for their own sport, it's bad for their future opportunities, and they potentially mar future relationships right there with that statement. Though I'm sure to all the players listed, it meant very much.

I would say it depends on the country a player is coming from. For example, for a player like Djokovic or Puig, any Olympic medal their country can get means very much. For countries like China or the U.S., probably very few care about where the tennis medal goes. One example of an exception is for the Williams sisters, since they exploded tennis popularity internationally, esp. in their earlier years.

The YEC can vary so much as well. For example, no one gave two **!*s about the Fort Worth WTA Finals. But the years they were in Istanbul were incredible.

I think so much of sports is context dependent. The draw, the field, big names who are in, injured, or retired, political context, country of the winning player, personal stories. I don't think you can say one is objectively and broadly more relevant than the other. Does anyone ever really reminisce on the Tokyo Olympics for tennis for example? The 2012 London Olympics on the other hand...
 
I’ve said a few times that I think the increased importance of masters series events, with them becoming mandatory in 2000 and ramping up their prize money, heavily intensified by the incredible consistency of the big 3 plus Murray in those events over such a long time, contributed to the IMO decreased importance of the YEC.

When the top players are playing each other so many times throughout the season in pretty or very high stakes matches in grand slams and masters series events (and sometimes in 500 events as well), it doesn’t feel that special to me when they square off yet again at the YEC, unless the year end no. 1 ranking is on the line.

The big 3 faced each other a total of 68 times in masters series events, and the big 3 plus Murray faced each other 108 times in them.

The switch to best of 3 set finals from 2008 was also a contributing factor there IMO.
 
TMF said:
According to an international panel of journalists, coaches, historians and industry representatives from 6 different continents, these are the following criteria being use to evaluate the player's ranking in ATG. Olympics results was never a criteria.

* Number of Major Titles won
* Overall performance at Grand Slam Events
* Player Ranking
* Performance at ATP/WTA events
* Performance(Win/loss record) at Davis & Fed Cup events
* Records held or broken(i.e. Consecutive winning streaks)
* Intangibles(Overall contribution to tennis)
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This is good to see. (y)

I agree.
 
Old poll from 2017, the results likey don't reflect the current view, nor the view we'll have 10 years from now. Olympics in tennis are only getting bigger and bigger over time.
 
Username_ said:
wtf = must play decent all year round to qualify against other top 7 players for the year then having to contend against them
olympics = free entry every 4 years

which seems harder to achieve
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Basically this.
For a player in top 20 it can be very likely that he will play more rarely WTF than Olympics, most of them don't get chance at all.
 
Sport said:
Old poll from 2017, the results likey don't reflect the current view, nor the view we'll have 10 years from now. Olympics in tennis are only getting bigger and bigger over time.
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It's weird cause the view that Olympics are bigger and WTF are bigger are represented in the same poll option.
 
I watched Borg vs. McEnroe, Lendl vs. McEnroe, Becker vs. Lendl, Becker vs. Sampras etc. matches at the YEC in previous eras, and those matches felt 'huge'.

When the big 3 have faced each other in semi-finals or finals at the YEC, it hasn't felt anywhere near as huge to me, as because I said in a previous post, they'd already played each other so often during that year and others in grand slams and masters series events (and sometimes in ATP 500 events as well).

Plus the increased (and IMO extremely regrettable) obsession with 'slam counting' and attitude that regular tournaments outside the slams are not a big deal, has clearly helped reduce the importance and prestige of all post-US Open tournaments in modern times, including the YEC.

It's definitely still a big tournament nowadays, but it's importance and stature has clearly reduced pretty noticeably over time IMO.

Regarding Nadal, I can't read his mind but without even getting to his singles gold medal in Beijing, I personally doubt he'd even want to trade in his doubles gold medal at Rio with his good friend Marc López for a YEC title.
 
Olympics is probably 2nd to a slam now and unquestionably superior to any masters title and edges out tour finals only slams are more important
 
Atp finals and Olympics can't be measured vs each other. But both are above masters and below a grand slam..

One thing about Olympics is it's rarity.
 
Gizo said:
Regarding Nadal, I can't read his mind but without even getting to his singles gold medal in Beijing, I personally doubt he'd even want to trade in his doubles gold medal at Rio with his good friend Marc López for a YEC title.
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No, he surely wouldn't. One thing people often forget about the Olympics is that f. e. in 2008 Spain won the gold medal, with Nadal being chosen to represent his country by national olympic committee. So, in a way, it's not his to trade.

Participating in the Olympic tournament is all about sports history, emotions, prestige. Folks can value it more or less, no problem with that, yet it's funny to find it being downgraded to nothing by the same people whose mouths are full of intangibles, contributions to the popularity of tennis etc.
 
The Olympics is all about timing because it's only every 4 years which is why it isn't easy to do because you have to peak at the right time once every 4 years. The ATP Finals has the best 8 players in the world and as a tournament as a whole, it's harder to win. Some of the best players skip the Olympics but they rarely do at the ATP Finals.
 
NoleFam said:
The Olympics is all about timing because it's only every 4 years which is why it isn't easy to do because you have to peak at the right time once every 4 years. The ATP Finals has the best 8 players in the world and as a tournament as a whole, it's harder to win. The best players skip the Olympics but they rarely do at the ATP Finals.
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Agreed.

Atp finals is harder to win

Olympics is far more about timing.
 
nolefam_2024 said:
Agreed.

Atp finals is harder to win

Olympics is far more about timing.
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I will say playing for your country does add a little extra pressure and tension so the Olympics isn't exactly easy to do. You could see it in that final with Novak and Carlos. It's just the ATP Finals is harder because of the players to have to beat.
 
I would actually trade Nadal's OG for a YEC if I was to choose.

Even though I like the OG.
 
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I think they are on parallel tracks and so not directly comparable

Recent years have seen the relevance of OG rise and Novak’s desire to win it will push it even higher. I can imagine a world years from now where it becomes one of the most important tourneys.

But these changes are still very recent. Many players continue to skip OG which they don’t do for other big tournaments.

We remember many WTF winners. But does anyone really recall Massu or Rosset?
 
My view has always been then same:

-Slams
-Masters/Olympics
-M1000


When the Masters stopped doing the final Bo5 and moved to Bo3 it lost a bit of prestige I think, but now the Olympics went to Bo3 again as well. What many don't know is the Olympics back in the day were Bo5 the whole way, not just the final.

But if I have to pick I've always put the Masters above the Olympics because of the history and tradition. The players that won it the most are Djokovic, Federer, Sampras, Lendl, etc.

But the Olympics are definitely above a Masters 1000, no contest (some argued otherwise).
 
It depends..

If you're a Rafa fan, Olympics are bigger than WTFs roughly from the 17th of August 2008.

If you're a Djokovic fan, WTFs have always been bigger and Olympics were irrelevant (directly contradicting what Djokovic himself felt) until roughly the 4th of August 2024, at which point the olympic gold became bery bery important no?

If you're a Federer fan, WTFs are bigger than Olympics, no question.
 
Mainad said:
Yeah, Djokovic always breaks out in tears after winning or losing a Masters. :cool:
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I'm not moved by how the players feel about it. I don't have high regard for it relative to other titles in that category. I didn't say it wasn't a nice or worthwhile achievement.
 
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The YEC is much bigger than the Olympics in tennis. Sadly, my favorite player is a propagandist.
 
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