The men's singles was one of two
tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cov ...
events on the
Tennis at the 1896 Summer Olympics
At the 1896 Summer Olympics, two tennis events were contested, both for men. They began on 8 April and continued on 9 April, 10 April, and 11 April.Dates given are in the Gregorian calendar. Greece still used the Julian calendar at the time. Accor ...
programme. The sixteen entrants were seeded into a single-elimination tournament, with only thirteen or fifteen of the players actually competing. They represented six nations.
Background
This was the first appearance of the men's singles tennis. The event has been held at every Summer Olympics where tennis has been on the program: from 1896 to 1924 and then from 1988 to the current program. Demonstration events were held in 1968 and 1984.
None of the leading players of the time, such as Wimbledon champion
Harold Mahony
Harold Segerson Mahony (13 February 1867 – 27 June 1905) was a Scottish-born Irish tennis player who is best known for winning the singles title at the Wimbledon Championships in 1896. His career lasted from 1888 until his death in 1905. Maho ...
, U.S champion
Robert Wrenn
Robert Duffield Wrenn (September 20, 1873 – November 12, 1925) was an American left-handed tennis player, four-time U.S. singles championship winner, and one of the first inductees in the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Biography
Wrenn w ...
,
William Larned or
Wilfred Baddeley, participated.
Competition format
Under ancient Greek single-elimination tournament rules, there were no brackets as under modern single-elimination rules; instead, all participants in a round were paired off with one bye if a round had an odd number of participants left. This format could result in a semifinals round with only 3 competitors (as happened in both the 1896 wrestling and doubles tennis events, which started with 5 wrestlers/pairs: the first round had two matches, with one wrestler/pair having a bye, and the second round had only one match, with another wrestler/pair having a bye; a modern tournament would have had one match in the first round with three byes, leading to two semifinals). The organizers avoided this problem in the singles tennis by dividing the players into four groups, with each group playing a single elimination tournament and the winner of each group advancing to the semifinals.
[
No bronze medal match was held; both semifinal losers are now considered bronze medal winners (the current medal system was not used at the time).
]
Schedule
Draw
Finals
The International Society of Olympic Historians
The International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 with the purpose of promoting and studying the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games. The majority of recent books on the Olympic Games have been ...
gives only thirteen players; according to them Frank and George Marshall did not participate.
Results summary
References
* (Digitally available a
* (Excerpt available a
*
ITF, 2008 Olympic Tennis Event Media Guide
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tennis at the 1896 Summer Olympics - Men's singles
Tennis at the 1896 Summer Olympics, Men's singles