American tennis star Taylor Fritz is going to find it difficult to fetch a gold medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics due to a very complicated match schedule, as per which he will have to play around 9 matches across July 31, August 1 and August 2. This can add a lot to Fritz’s workload and the men’s singles result on Wednesday already showed its impact on Fritz.
The USA No.1 men’s player lost to the Wimbledon 2024 semifinalist from Italy, Lorenzo Musetti in straight sets, 6-4, 7-5 in the third round. But Fritz covered up for that loss by winning his second round men’s doubles match that followed, with compatriot Tommy Paul.
At the time of writing this report, Fritz was to team up with Coco Gauff to take on Canada’s G. Dabrowski and Felix Auger-Aliassime in the mixed doubles quarterfinals.
This blunder in schedule will not provide Fritz enough time to train, rest and recover and can hence, become a problem in his path of achieving the Olympic gold. Although his participation is now down to 2 categories, he might end up not winning a gold or in fact any medal in the tournament.
If Fritz is tested further, he might still have to bow out of one of the doubles events so that he can put all his effort and focus at one place.
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Earlier, star players like Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal had also raised similar issues and asked organizers to consider the fitness of tennis players and think about the rest they need in between matches.
Fritz not the only one facing the brunt of Olympics scheduling
Nadal was scheduled to play both his first round men’s singles and men’s doubles clash back to back with a difference of just a couple of hours. This prompted him to raise this concern in a press conference as he stressed how he was supposed to play back to aback matches in such a short span of time.
The unavailability of enough resting time not just severely impacts players’ performance but also has a hazardous impact on their fitness.
Djokovic too had questioned the organizers for their scheduling as he was drawn against a men’s doubles specialist in the first round of his men’s singles clash. He questioned this and stressed that it was not a good move to make a doubles player play a singles game as the brutality of the loss only impacts the standard and impact of the game.
Tennis is given 2 weeks of the tournament and hence, organisers have to finish all the matches across categories in this limited time frame. This may have resulted in creation of such hectic schedules. Perhaps, in the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, the organisers could consider making it a team event of sorts, something which 2012 bronze medallist from the United States in tennis, John Isner has advocated on social media.
