Tennis

About Tennis

Tennis has a special place in Irish Olympic history: Dubliner John Pius Boland won gold in both the men's singles and doubles at the very first modern Games in Athens 1896, becoming the first Olympic tennis champion, though his medals remain officially credited to Great Britain in Olympic records, despite Boland's own insistence on his Irish identity at the time.

Tennis was later dropped from the Olympic programme before returning in 1988, when Owen Casey became Ireland's most prolific Olympic tennis player of the modern era, competing at three consecutive Games (Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996) in both singles and doubles, partnered at various points by Eoin Collins and Scott Barron.

At the Games, tennis follows the same format as the sport's Grand Slam tournaments, with men's and women's singles and doubles and a mixed doubles event, played across best-of-three-set matches (best-of-five for the men's singles final).