Olympic tennis--announcers are great!

[dav4463]

As bad as Teddy Atlas and his partner get on my nerves during Olympic boxing, the reverse is true with Olympic tennis.

I think Jimmy Arias is a great analyst and both of the guys are easy to listen to and actually make the matches more fun to watch.

[cj]

I love tennis. I play a lot, and I watch all the majors and many others on TV. That said, I have zero interest in Olympic tennis. I just don't think it is a big goal for top players making zillions of dollars.

[dav4463]

I don't think all of them take it as seriously as they do the Majors, but it was worth watching to see the pure joy of Elena Dementieva as she won the gold!

[GameTheory]

I love tennis. I play a lot, and I watch all the majors and many others on TV. That said, I have zero interest in Olympic tennis. I just don't think it is a big goal for top players making zillions of dollars.I'm not sure why you think that. In many (most) countries, Olympic Gold is the absolute pinnacle of sports achievement. Federer desperately wanted to win a gold medal the last two times, and Nadal certainly was giving his all (as usual) to win this time. Federer was in tears winning the *doubles* gold the other day. Nicholas Massu from Chile, who is not highly ranked, won the singles gold in Athens and went completely bananas -- he played the tournament of his life and was obviously inspired by the Olympic environment -- medalling in singles & doubles. These were the first medals for Chile EVER. He was a national hero. I think he took it quite seriously. The Russians might prize it more than anybody (they swept the women's singles medals this year). Kafelnikov won the singles gold in 2000 and said it was his biggest achievement (he also won the French & the Australian).

I think is it really just some of the Americans that treat it more lightly, which is one reason why it is rare that I find myself rooting for an American tennis player. Most of 'em (the higher ranked ones) are pretty arrogant, and the ones that aren't are total head cases like James Blake that are just painful to watch...

[OTM Al]

Don't care for tennis much at all but seem to recall one year when Stefi Graff was playing they were talking her about winning a super slam, the 4 bigs plus the Olympics. Seemed at least then it was considered just as good.