Tennis and the Olympics: pros and cons

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Tennis and the Olympics always seemed like an odd combination, not the worst you’ve ever imagined, just a slightly off-center alliance.

Like Bob Dylan winning a Pulitzer. Better yet, Dylan appearing in a Victoria’s Secret advert.

But let’s bring it all back to home or at least to Beijing.

Had a chat last week at the Home Depot Center in Carson with the head of the women’s tennis tour, Larry Scott. This was before Serena Williams pulled out because of a knee injury. The tournament already had lost Venus Williams and Lindsay Davenport due to the same problem.

Venus ended up pulling out of this week’s tour stop in Montreal. If something had to give for the top players, it seemed, it was going to be the regular tour events, not the Olympics.

So with the wreckage piling up on the tour, it seemed a good time to ask Scott about the relevance of the Olympics and tennis. He gave a thoughtful answer, as he often does.

‘I think there’s always been a healthy debate and discussion about if it is a positive or negative, and I think there are pros and cons to tennis being in the Olympics,’ he said. ‘I certainly view it as positive, on balance, a strong positive.’

Venus Williams was incredibly emotional when she won the gold medal in singles in 2000 at Sydney, and Serena said the impact of the Olympics hit her after they won the doubles in 2000.

The impact is even more striking for players from smaller countries.

‘It is the world’s biggest sporting event,’ Scott said. ‘I think it helps for the popularity of the sport to be there and our athletes do get exposure, to have stature and prominence because the Olympics are so important. They get a certain amount of gravitas and stature in the home country.’

Then there’s the downside of the Olympics, as experienced firsthand at Carson.

“Some of the negatives are the calendar absolutely wreaks havoc, the date of the Olympics wreaks havoc on our calendar because our calendar is based on annual events and the Olympics sort of plops in every four years,” Scott said. “And it takes not only the two weeks the athletes have to be available and then the border events. The players won’t be as prepared for the U.S. Open as they might be otherwise.

“From that, at a minimum, a major inconvenience, if not detrimental, to the events that touch the Olympic time frame.”

Still, he thinks the positives far outweigh the negatives. There is the short shelf-life of the Olympic platform during the Games, and then, perhaps more important, the long-range impact.

“They need a legacy after the Olympics,” he said. “We’re going to have a huge event in China, post-Olympics. They’ve got this amazing new tennis stadium they need to fill it with something big. That’s one of the motivations for doing a big thing at the tour level.”

Even a prospective bid for the Olympics, in 2016, has helped the tours. Madrid is building the Caja Magica (the Magical Box), which eventually will serve as a venue for men’s and women’s tour stops.

“The only reason it got built is because Madrid is bidding for the Olympics,” Scott said. “If tennis weren’t in the Olympics, tennis would have lost that 300 million Euro investment.”

-- Lisa Dillman