Tennis on the brain | Beijing Olympics Blog

With all of the great reporting by SI's L. Jon Wertheim from Wimbledon, we've got tennis on the brain this week as the last major tournament before the Olympics draws to a close this weekend. The IOC has tennis on the brain too; the Olympic tennis tournament entries were announced today. Highlights: Federer and Ivanovic are the headliners, and 18 of the top 20 women in and 17 of the top 20 men are confirmed to participate. When Steffi Graf and Stefan Edberg won the Olympic demonstration event in 1984 (it was limited to the 21-and-under crowd that time around), there were doubters who wondered whether wealthy tennis pros would want to add yet another exhausting event to their calendar. The ensuing 24 years have proven the doubters wrong. Tennis returned to full medal status in 1988 at the Seoul Olympics and Graf won again, part of her unprecedented "Golden Slam." That took the importance of the Olympic tennis event to a new level, and it's been a must-play tournament for the top pros ever since. With tennis taking hold as both a professional sport and a sport for players at all levels in China, the Olympic tennis tournament will be a special one in Beijing.

ITF website on Olympic tennis history

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August 11, 2008 07:58 PM ET

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The first day of tennis was a total farce..The afternoon session was cancelled due to rain and BOCOG did nothing but offer a refund...Hundreds were left stranded at the Tennis center drenched and cold...no announcement and no update throughout the day on whether the session would be cancelled or what would happen to ticketholders...Volunteers were forcing ticket refund applications on people and asking them to leave!!!

A refund?? Are you freaking kidding me? People came from overseas and out of town...paid ridiculous amounts for accomodation and transportation...endured long waits for tickets...just to be part of the Olympics

Now BOCOG is giving these people (me included) no option but to get a refund...The face value of the ticket is only 100-200 RMB but what some people had to do just to get these tickets only to be let down by BOCOG shows how badly China is at handling large events...why were ticketholders to the cancelled session on the 10th not allowed to watch the 2:30 session on the 11th? All because BOCOG was too effing lazy to handle this mess

For all the shine and pizzazz these Olympics have brought for China, there are still many logistical areas where China needs to improve - BOCOG is just like the CCP...it doesn't give a crap about the little people...so screw them