Advertisement

Eugenie Bouchard and Vasek Pospisil miss the cut for the Olympic mixed-doubles event

Eugenie Bouchard and Vasek Pospisil miss the cut for the Olympic mixed-doubles event

RIO DE JANEIRO – For most sports, Olympic places are determined way ahead of time.

But since tennis at the Olympics is already an outlier in so many ways, the mixed-doubles event is just another way the sport doesn't quite go with the flow.

It's an event that the players sign in for on site that begins well after the other medal events and is restricted, basically, to 12 teams plus four ITF selections. It's only a 16-team draw; only four matches are needed for gold, and only two wins needed to be able to compete for a medal.

So when all the rankings calculations were made, as top singles players waffled on whether they really wanted to add another event, as nations tried to figure out last-minute combinations that would give them one of those precious spots, the final entry list came out just before 1 p.m. Tuesday, with the draw an hour later.

The net result, from the Canadian side, is that Genie Bouchard and Vasek Pospisil didn't make the cut, although there is always the possibility some teams will pull out. She said later that it was her own fault because her ranking just wasn't high enough.

Two of the four seeded teams are French, each composed of one half of their best doubles teams: men's Wimbledon champions Pierre-Hugues Herbert (with Kristina Mladenovic) and Nicolas Mahut (with Caroline Garcia). Mladenovic and Garcia are the second-highest ranked team on the WTA Tour and the reigning French Open champions. A final between these two tandems would not be unexpected but this is, after all the Olympics.

The Romanians, who benefit from having two top men's doubles players in Horia Tecau and Florin Mergea, also have two teams as do the Americans as Venus Williams, eliminated in the first round in both singles and doubles, will team up with Rajeev Ram. Jack Sock and Bethanie Mattek-Sands (both of whom have Grand Slam doubles titles) are the other pair.

Spain also has two: No. 3 seeds Rafael Nadal and Garbiñe Muguruza as well as Carla Suarez Navarro and David Ferrer. All four are considered singles players even if the women have had good success together in doubles in the past and qualified for the WTA Tour finals in Singapore last year.

Here's what the draw looks like.

The rankings cutoff for this one was pretty fierce. Had Novak Djokovic decided he wanted to play, he could have teamed up with Ana Ivanovic or Jelena Jankovic and made the cut. But it had to be Djokovic.

The four ITF spots went with the next teams eligible by ranking in three cases, with no other pending issues such as regional representation. The pair of Marcelo Melo, ranked No. 3 on the ATP Tour in doubles and Teliana Pereira, ranked No. 135, were given a spot because they represent the host nation. A team from Africa (Tunisia, for example, with Malek Jaziri and Ons Jabeur) would have been been given a spot had they entered.

So that leaves Bouchard and Pospisil as the fourth alternates at the moment. Substuting Gabriela Dabrowski for Bouchard wouldn't have put them any further ahead. Pairing up Bouchard with Daniel Nestor (the rankings criteria go back to what was in force at the original Olympic entry deadline date of June 15) would have moved Canada from fourth-next in to a tie for third. Not much difference.

The Canadians are behind the following teams on the waiting list: Nenad Zimonjic/Ana Ivanovic (SRB), Andy Murray/Heather Watson (GBR) and Sara Errani/Andreas Seppi (ITA).

In other words, there's not much chance.