The Tokyo Olympics ended in an all-Croatian final with top seeds Nikola Mektic/Mate Pavic taking the Gold Medal. They’re still around in Paris, but haven’t played with each other for over a year. 2016 champion Rafael Nadal will feature in a blockbuster partnership with Carlos Alcaraz, while Andy Murray is wrapping up his career. Who are some of the main contenders for the 2024 Paris Olympics in men’s doubles?
Paris Olympics Men’s Doubles Preview
Regular pairs
Three duos stand out from the entry list as top-quality players who have been competing alongside each other for the entire season (or more): Simone Bolelli/Andrea Vavassori (Italy), Kevin Krawietz/Tim Puetz (Germany), and Andres Molteni/Maximo Gonzalez (Argentina). The Italians have already made two Grand Slam finals this season with the latter coming at the Olympic venue in Paris. While they suffered an opening-round exit in their last event at Wimbledon, that loss looks so much better in hindsight with Harri Heliovaara/Henry Patten claiming the title.
Krawietz/Puetz are worth a closer look as well. This partnership hasn’t quite reached the heights that Krawietz once got to with Andreas Mies (back-to-back Roland Garros titles), but they’ll be entering the event with plenty of momentum after picking up the title in Hamburg. During that run, they took out two potential Olympic medal contenders and are currently sitting at No. 6 in the ATP Doubles Race. Gonzalez/Molteni have been playing with each other regularly since the start of the 2023 season and while their biggest title thus far came on hard courts, they’re dangerous on clay as well with five ATP Tour trophies over the past two years (2023-24 Cordoba, 2023 Rio de Janeiro, 2023-24 Barcelona).
For Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic it will be the first appearance together since 2023 Wimbledon, but it’s tough to forget how dominant they were during their 2.5-year partnership. The Croats picked up 17 titles, including three ATP 1000 events on clay (2021 Monte Carlo, 2021-22 Rome), and perhaps most importantly, they are the defending Olympic champions. The experience they have amassed with one another has got to count for something, even if it’s been a while since they last played. Don’t count out Sander Gille/Joran Vliegen (Belgium) or the Tsitsipas brothers (Greece) either; their connection after all these years is almost telepathic.
Doubles stars that will need their partners to step up
Four doubles players are situated above 7000 points in the ATP Rankings right now: Rohan Bopanna (India), Matthew Ebden (Australia), Marcel Granollers (Spain), and Horacio Zeballos (Argentina). The Argentine isn’t even going to the Olympics with his Federation deciding to choose the aforementioned regular pair of Gonzalez/Molteni to represent them instead. Whether this is right or if the Olympic qualification rules are a bit outdated00that’s a topic for another day.
Ebden is partnering former World No. 2 John Peers, who’s a legend of the sport but it’s unclear whether his form this year will be enough to compete for the Gold. The Australians did the smart thing and signed up for a couple of events together recently, finishing runner-up on grass in Eastbourne but losing Round 1 in their clay warm-up in Hamburg. Granollers will have a tougher job to do with his partner Pablo Carreno Busta being a fine doubles player a few years back. But now the 33-year-old is coming off a long injury hiatus and has only played one doubles match in 2023 and 2024 combined.
Bopanna’s best option was to partner with N. Sriram Balaji, who’s currently ranked World No. 65 and playing the best tennis of his career. His main tour experience is somewhat limited, though, and their first match together in six years ended in a brutal 1-6 4-6 defeat to Jakob Schnaitter/Mark Wallner in Hamburg. The Indian duo will need to sort things out quickly, especially as their star player is generally not at his strongest on clay courts. Wesley Koolhof and Tallon Griekspoor (Netherlands) could be in a similar position to these pairs as while Griekspoor is doing okay in doubles, their match against Jannik Sinner/Lorenzo Sonego in Davis Cup last year had the Italians targeting him at the net with great success.
Strong teams looking for chemistry
Rajeev Ram (United States) and Joe Salisbury (Great Britian) are so used to competing together by now with four Grand Slam titles to their name (2020 Australian Open, 2021-23 US Open), but for the Olympics they obviously had to split up. The good thing for both of them is that their partners are elite doubles players too. Salisbury and Neal Skupski have won two ATP Tour events in just four appearances on the tour (2019 Vienna, 2021 San Diego) and have sometimes fought hand in hand for the British Davis Cup team. Their overall team record of 13-4 doesn’t look half-bad, even if not much of that is relatively recent.
Ram will play with Austin Krajicek and that’s another duo that has made some Davis Cup/tour appearances over the years. You could make the case that they shouldn’t be particularly dangerous on clay courts, but after all Krajicek is the 2023 Roland Garros champion. They were recently defeated by Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Fabien Reboul in the Hamburg semifinals. The French pair is kind of in a similar boat with Roger-Vasselin being the higher-ranked of the two, but it’s not like the federation doesn’t include any other strong doubles specialists. This pairing hit it off quite quickly in their debut appearance in Hamburg, only losing to Krawietz/Puetz in the final.
Wildcards
Lastly, some pairs that don’t fall into the previous three categories but shouldn’t be overlooked. All eyes are on Carlos Alcaraz/Rafael Nadal (Spain) as the two singles stars try to produce something special together. Alcaraz won the last two Slams in singles, but he’s only got seven professional matches in doubles under his belt (most recent of them over two years ago). But Nadal is an Olympic legend and won this event already with Marc Lopez in 2016. The Spaniards can be dangerous, especially with how strong their baseline games are while still possessing solid reflexes at the net.
Tomas Machac and Adam Pavlasek (Czech Republic) have only played three Davis Cup matches with each other, but individually they’ve been some of the most interesting players on the doubles circuit this year. Machac has been firing alongside Zhizhen Zhang and has the hand skills plus the ability to take returns early to be a huge factor on this side of the sport. Pavlasek’s singles career ended due to injuries a couple of years ago, but his rise to the top in doubles since has been remarkable and he reads the game incredibly well.
Sadly, it’s not possible to mention everybody. Robin Haase and Jean-Julien Rojer (Netherlands) can be a threat particularly if Haase’s serve is clicking. Alexander Bublik (Kazakhstan) almost won Roland Garros with Andrey Golubev three years ago and producing a similar run with Aleksandr Nedovyesov doesn’t seem impossible.
Another Italian duo looked like a factor as no one can match Jannik Sinner in a baseline blow-for-blow in singles this year and he had the chance to apply that in doubles as well alongside the creative Lorenzo Musetti, but the singles World No. 1 has pulled out due to tonsilitis. Nuno Borges/Francisco Cabral (Portugal) have been winless in four appearances this year so far, but we know how dangerous they can be and their chemistry is always off the charts. Plenty of upsets coming up!
Main Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
