Coco Gauff’s coach Brad Gilbert described the replacement situation at the Paris Olympics as “ridiculous” and suggested that going forward there should always be a couple of alternates on site while late withdrawals should face at least some sort of sanction.
In the week before the start of the Paris Olympics, several big names pulled out of the event – that includes world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, 2021 Wimbledon semifinalist Hubert Hurkacz and former world No. 4 Rune. And after the Paris Olympics started, a couple of other withdrawals happened as Alex de Minaur and Cameron Norrie also said they weren’t ready to play.
Due to the current rule, withdrawals that occurred after July 19th could have only been replaced by doubles players who made the Olympics.
That led to the likes of Matthew Ebden, Francisco Cabral and Petros Tsitsipas appearing in the singles event and getting trashed. For the context, Ebden didn’t play any singles matches for two years before the Olympics – Cabral only plays doubles and his career-high ranking in singles saw him ranked at No. 862 in the world – while Tsitsipas’ younger brother Petros is also mainly focused on doubles and has never been a top-700 player in the singles.
“The Olympics singles alternate situation is ridiculous….
