Tennis at the 2024 Olympics: Alcaraz, Swiatek, Djokovic, and Gauff return to Roland Garros

Olympic tennis is bringing the best players in the world back to Roland Garros in Paris after a Wimbledon interlude. Six weeks after the French Open, champions Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek return to the clay to compete for medals, alongside legends of the sport — two, in Andy Murray and Angelique Kerber, playing their last tournament before retirement.

Coco Gauff and Taylor Fritz will lead Team USA’s bid to maintain its impressive Olympic tennis record, while Rafael Nadal will partner Alcaraz in the headline men’s doubles pairing and Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova will team up with fellow doubles specialist Katerina Siniakova for the Czech Republic, with the duo looking to retain their gold medal from Tokyo 2020.

Schedule

The tennis events run from July 27 to August 4 at Stade Roland Garros in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. As with the French Open Grand Slam tournament, there will be night sessions on the show courts (Philippe-Chatrier, Suzanne-Lenglen, and Simonne-Mathieu) starting at 1 p.m. ET (6pm BST) from July 27 to August 2, alongside the daytime sessions that start from 6 a.m. ET (11am BST). On August 3 and August 4, the three medal matches per day will begin from 6 a.m. ET.

How to watch

TV: NBC, USA, Telemundo and Universo. BBC Sport in the U.K.

Streaming: Peacock, NBCOlympics.com, NBC.com, the NBC app and the NBC Olympics app. BBC Sport in the U.K.

Who’s on Team USA

World No 2 and French Open semifinalist Gauff leads Team USA’s singles hopes, but she will likely have to reverse a 1-11 head-to-head against world No 1 Iga Swiatek if she wants to take home a gold medal to go with her U.S. Open title from 2023.

The highest-ranked American man is world No 11 Fritz, but he is not a fan of the conditions in Paris. His mood might be helped by Dunlop being the ball provider for the Paris Games; Fritz loathes the Wilson balls used on the Roland Garros clay for the French Open. “These conditions, these balls… if you don’t have one of the heaviest, highest RPM (revolutions per minute) balls on tour, it doesn’t actually go anywhere,” he said during this year’s tournament.

Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, and Sebastian Korda have skipped the Olympics to focus on hard-court practice for the tournaments in Washington, D.C. and Cincinnati in the lead-up to the U.S. Open in New York. Gauff is joined by longtime doubles partner Jessica Pegula, with the duo likely representing the best chance for a gold medal in tennis for Team USA. An in-form Danielle Collins and Emma Navarro, who knocked Gauff out of Wimbledon, make up the singles roster alongside Gauff and Pegula.

Elsewhere in the doubles events, six-time Grand Slam champion Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek will be eyeing up a chance for a medal too, alongside the mixed doubles pairing which is yet to be confirmed, but is expected to consist of Krajicek and Desirae Krawczyk.

Key storylines

Greats of the game — and its newly anointed king. Murray, the only singles player in history to retain an Olympic gold medal, has confirmed that the 2024 Paris Olympics will be his last tennis tournament, while Nadal, who has won 14 French Opens on the Roland Garros clay, could also be embarking on his final major tournament depending on how his body holds up.

Nadal, who won singles gold in 2008 and doubles gold in 2016, will play the singles, but he is also representing Spain in the doubles with Alcaraz, the reigning French Open and Wimbledon champion who is running away with the top of the sport.

In the men’s singles, Novak Djokovic is seeking Olympic gold, the only big honour in tennis he is yet to win, while Alcaraz will be hoping to upset his quest after world No 1 Jannik Sinner withdrew with tonsillitis. In the women’s, the rest of the draw will be asking how to beat Swiatek on clay. She has won three French Opens in a row, with a 21-match winning streak at Roland Garros, and a 19-match winning streak on clay this year, after winning Masters 1000 tournaments (one level below a Grand Slam tournament) in Madrid and Rome en route to Paris.

The draw gods have thrown up one true cracker in the men’s singles: the possibility of Nadal and Djokovic facing each other in the second round. The Spaniard will have to get through Hungary’s Marton Fucsovics, while the Serbian will have to defeat Australia’s Matthew Ebden.

GO DEEPER

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What are the Olympics tennis singles draws?

Men’s draw:

Women’s draw:

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(Photos: Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek; Hector Vivas/Matthew Stockman/ Getty Images)