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Who Are The Contenders In Rio?
- Updated: July 22, 2016
For as long as most fans can recall, the favorites in professional tennis have been pretty clear. For the better part of two decades, we’ve had a small handful of favorites on the men’s side—first Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, and more recently Novak Djokovic—and really a single favorite on the women’s side in Serena Williams. But so far in 2016 the status quo of professional tennis has shown slight signs of shifting. Djokovic and Williams remain the best on their respective sides by clear margins, but neither is perfect. The former just suffered a shocking upset in the third round of Wimbledon, and while Williams triumphed on the London grass she’d been mediocre (by her absurd standards, that is) heading into the tournament. The result is that we’re heading into the Rio Olympics with a feeling that the tennis tournaments are at least a little bit more open than they might have been at this time a year ago. So who are the contenders in the main events?
Men’s Singles One needn’t look at any official odds to know the pecking order on the men’s side. Djokovic is the favorite, with Wimbledon winner Andy Murray in the second slot, and Federer third. This is pretty much the order of things in general these days, and while there will be other formidable competitors (such as Wimbledon finalist Milos Raonic), it would be genuinely shocking if someone outside of the big three were to win. The fun thing is that it’s by no means a foregone conclusion that Djokovic will win the gold. Consider this: ATP World Tour has detailed information on all the players and their performances over the years and in looking at the head-to-head between Djokovic and Federer, you can see that Federer is 3-2 in best-of-three set matches dating back to the beginning of 2015. The Swiss is still perfectly capable of beating the world number one in shorter matches, and the …
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