From Osaka to Broady, Olympic pressure comes in many forms

When do tennis players perform better: with the pressure on, or the pressure off?

It’s a sporting dilemma as old as time, brought into sharper focus this week by the Tokyo 2020 action at Ariake Tennis Park. It’s a privilege, we’re told. It produces diamonds, but it also bursts pipes. Whether managing it, channelling it, or capitalising on its effect on the player across the net, there’s no escaping it.

Naomi Osaka – world No. 2, final torchbearer before lighting the Olympic Cauldron and the unofficial face of the Games – admitted as much following her third-round defeat by Czech world No. 42 Marketa Vondrousova on Centre Court on Tuesday.

“For me, I feel like I should be used to it by now,” said the four-time Grand Slam champion when asked about the pressure of playing at the Olympics, her first tournament in almost eight weeks. “But at the same time, I think the scale of everything is a bit higher because of the break that I took. I’m sad that I lost, of course, but all in all really happy with my first Olympic experience.”

In many ways, it’s a first Olympic experience without equal. Osaka has known since March that she would be the centrepiece of Friday night's Olympic Opening Ceremony, prompting a late change in the Day 1 order of play to move her opening match to Sunday.

As the winner of the previous two hard-court Grand Slams, Osaka was considered the player to beat in Tokyo – something Vondrousova, the player to do so, pointed to before the match, insisting all the pressure sat with the No. 2 seed in their first meeting.

“It’s so much pressure, I cannot imagine,” the former Roland Garros finalist said afterwards, ranking the victory alongside her wins over former world No. 1 Simona Halep. “I know how it is to be under pressure, it’s tough. Naomi, she is the greatest just now, the greatest in the game, and she’s also the face of the Olympics. It was tough for her, I think, to play like this.

“But I think she didn’t play a bad match – she was fighting all match, staying calm, and she was fighting until the very end. The end was very tight – it could have gone both ways, so I’m just happy to be through.”

There is arguably nobody in Tokyo better placed to speak on playing with the weight of expectation Osaka has faced at a home Olympics than Andy Murray, who won the first of his Olympic golds for Great Britain at London 2012.

Following his doubles second round victory with Joe Salisbury over German duo Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz, Murray was quick to echo Osaka’s point that eight weeks away from the court since Roland Garros was a likely factor, despite two comfortable wins to reach the last 16.

“It was obviously a bit of a surprise, but she’s not played much recently,” he said. “It’s not easy out there.”

And just as no two Olympic tournaments are directly comparable – not least in the unique circumstances surrounding Tokyo 2020 – no two players are alike either, Murray noted. For him, pressure is a source of inspiration to be embraced rather than avoided.

“I think, maybe not everyone, but for me, I like being under pressure,” said the two-time Olympic singles champion. “I like feeling nerves, because I feel like it helps you concentrate better and ultimately it helps you perform better.

“Maybe the 45 minutes or hour before each match is a little bit more difficult because you’re doubting things and overthinking things a little bit. But once you actually get out there and start hitting balls, you want to feel that pressure. It helps you to perform better. That’s why I think, generally in those pressure situations, you see the best performances from athletes, because they’re at their most focused.”

Osaka’s exit, followed by No. 5 seed Karolina Pliskova’s loss to Italy’s Camila Giorgi, means five of the top six seeds in the women’s draw have fallen before the quarter-finals.

The survivor, No. 4 seed Elina Svitolina, shared her tried-and-tested approach to dealing with any perceived added pressure: “I only look to my next match.”

Four days into the Olympic Tennis Event, Svitolina has already played eight hours in the gruelling Tokyo heat and humidity, battling past No. 14 seed Maria Sakkari 5-7 6-3 6-4 in two hours, 38 minutes.

“It is what it is, so I have my next tough opponent,” she admitted. “I have to be ready, and I have to recover physically to bring a good game tomorrow.”

Pressure is not reserved solely for those with single-digit seedings by their names. Players at the other end of the entry list rankings may talk about the burden of expectation resting with their opponent, but that's not to say they don't have their own motivations for victory beyond the satisfaction of reaching the next round.

Just ask Liam Broady, the final confirmed entrant in the Olympic Tennis Event in Tokyo, who produced the biggest win of his career by defeating No. 7 seed and 2021 Wimbledon semi-finalist Hubert Hurkacz 7-5 3-6 6-3 to reach the third round.

“That’s a pretty good win,” the world No. 143 said with a laugh at the understatement. “It’s obviously a career-best win at a career-high moment, representing GB at the Olympics. It couldn’t have gone better.”

Broady explained the last-ditch efforts it took to arrive in Tokyo – a tale of international phone calls, PCR testing, 12-hour days spent making arrangements and a Village dorm shared with Team GB’s gymnasts – but also the pressure riding on his decision to accept a place at the Games.

“My first question [when I got the call] was, am I coming to sign as an alternate, or am I coming to play the tournament,” Broady explained. “[Iain Bates, GB’s Team Leader] said his impression was that I was going to be in. So I said let me call my coach, because I was supposed to be playing the Lexington Challenger and Atlanta qualifying after that.”

With no rankings points or prize money on offer to players at the Olympics – barring anything offered by the nations themselves – the decision for Broady was more complex than simply jumping on a plane and becoming an Olympian. At risk were the strides he has made over the past year to reach the verge of the ATP Tour.

“I called my coach first because I wanted to make the right decision for my career,” he said. “Obviously, with such a short turnaround I thought it would be difficult to perform well. I’ve proved myself wrong, and that’s a good thing, I guess.

“Over the last year-and-a-half, I’ve started to put a few results together and started to build stable foundations within my tennis off the court, and that’s starting to pay off this year. It’s nice to get this result as well, just to know I’m doing some things right. Obviously to beat somebody of that calibre at the Olympics you have to be doing better than I was, so that’s nice.

“The biggest thing was I didn’t want to have a regret after my career. You never know – maybe I will play in Paris in three years’ time, maybe I won’t. I didn’t want to look back and say that I turned down the chance to represent my country at the Olympics.”