Wimbledon Olympics: Why It Will Define the 2012 Tennis Season

Roger Federer made some interesting comments a few days back as he reflected on the upcoming mountain of opportunity over the next four months. Via tennis.com:

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“But the three-set format earlier on in the tournament, that is very dangerous. Who knows then who is in good shape and who is not. Usually when I play and win Wimbledon then I am in good shape at the U.S. Open and I think just today how the conditions are, then if you play good then you play good everywhere.

"It's hard to see someone win all four—I mean Paris, Wimbledon, the Olympics and the U.S. Open—and I don't think anyone is thinking of something that crazy at the moment. I think we are all taking it one by one.”

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What Federer seems to reveal about the 2012 season, which maybe the average spectator or fan might not appreciate fully, is that it is very much a five-slam season to the top guys. He speaks here of ‘all four’ just as if of the Calendar Grand Slam, and it wouldn't surprise anybody that he thinks of it like that.

It will, after all, be an unusually intense period of tennis. The end of May will see the French Open, the end of June Wimbledon, the end of July the Wimbledon Olympics and the end of August the US Open.

The tennis season has typically enjoyed nearly a two-month hiatus after Wimbledon (more fully appreciated in past years because of the groundbreaking finals that have been played there). In 2012, it will simply roll on, major, seemingly, to major.

The big debate has centred on whether the Wimbledon Olympics deserves the reverence in which it is being held by top players. Traditionalists have suggested that playing it there would demean the glory of winning at the All-England Club, or that somehow playing a best-of-three-set tournament at the world’s most prestigious tennis club is somehow beneath it.

Ironically, these are points that can be raised precisely in support of having the event at Wimbledon. Where better to host a quadrennial tournament that defines the sport than at its most storied playing ground?

The spectre of Wimbledon and all it means to tennis only adds an intangible, almost superfluous kudos to the prospect of victory at the Olympics in 2012.

For another thing, it is a quadrennial event, and the chances of it being played on historic grass again, at London, at Wimbledon, within this century or the lifetimes or careers of any of the men contesting it this year, are practically nil.

Yet for all the hype, Federer does raise significant questions about the validity of the Olympics as the acknowledged "pinnacle" of tennis. The three-set format does considerably limit the capacity of the tournament to wean out, as it were, the true champion.

Grand slam events, with a five-set cushion, allow for a player to find his form in time and, statistically, the tournament to crown the truly deserving champion.

The Olympics are slightly different, however, and this best-of-three-set format probably achieves quite subtly what it is all about. Tennis is about current form and being the king of week. In a cruel sort of way, this will only be accentuated at Wimbledon, where the swifter grass is unlikely to offer any secure rhythm early in the match.

There are slight comforts—in a third-set advantage set (where games continue after six-all until one player wins by two), and a slightly larger 64-man draw.

By and large, however, it will be a tournament championed by a frontrunner, with a solid aggressive, one-two punch sort of game. In a sense, the man of greater urgency and desperation is likely to come out on top.

That does make it seem like a case of high risk, high reward. This, after all, is the sum of the fear expressed by Federer in his words. Yet from the technical and tennis perspective, the Wimbledon Olympics should size up as a defining event in the 2012 calendar in several ways.

It will firstly be an exciting bit of innovation—in a year that has seen blue clay—for the All England Club, which will crown a gold medalist, as well as be the first tennis club ever to host two tournaments in a single year.

It is an event that is also almost never going to happen again. In 2016, the Olympics will be held in Rio de Janeiro.

Within the context of the calendar this year, too, it does add a certain "fifth slam" flavour to an already jam-packed, revolutionary 2012. The Mayans have prophesied the end of the world, and if it is to be the case, there is no better way to end tennis history than having four consecutive months of elite tournaments.

The Roland Garros-Wimbledon double, the trans-Channel slam, will be joined by the trans-Atlantic "slam," the Olympics-US Open. One might say winning all four might constitute an achievement in parallel with a Calendar Slam, judging from Wimbledon’s double duty, which surely outranks the previous Olympic years just for the venue.

Finally, the Wimbledon Olympics will be reflective of some of the true qualities of tennis championship, which the contextual nature of the season shouldn't spoil the opportunity of glorifying.

Such things as being the best man at any moment, having all the tools to readily capitalise on rare opportunities, being a player worthy of tennis’ most hallowed surface (where so much of its history has been written), and finally, being merely a man worthy of victory at Wimbledon—these are the traits of the greatest champions, and in a limited but flexible format the most deserving man should come out with top honours.

It all sounds like something out of The Hunger Games. But the winner will deserve to gloat about it—after all, this is one tennis event that even the quadrennial Olympics won’t see again.