Sumit Nagal in entry list for men’s singles tennis at Paris 2024 Olympics

India’s Sumit Nagal features in the men’s singles entry list for the Paris 2024 Olympics released by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) on Thursday.

This will be Nagal’s second Olympic appearance after featuring at Tokyo 2020. He defeated Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin in the opening round but lost to Daniil Medvedev in the second there.

The men’s and women’s singles events at Paris 2024 will feature 64 players each. The top 56 eligible men’s singles players, as per ATP rankings released on June 10, obtained quotas for their countries. However, each country could obtain a maximum of four quotas.

Though Sumit Nagal was 77th, a career-high for him, in the rankings when the qualifying window ended, he made the cut off as more than four players from multiple countries were ahead of him. Multiple withdrawals also helped his cause.

Nagal was 138th in the rankings in January but has been in exceptional form since then. The Indian tennis player broke into the top 100 for the first time after winning the Chennai Open earlier this year.

Ranked 95th in the singles tennis rankings just a week before the qualifying window ended, Nagal jumped a whopping 18 places following his clutch ATP Challenger title win at the Heilbronn Neckarcup in Germany to bring himself into Paris 2024 contention.

Nagal will join Rohan Bopanna, who will partner N Sriram Balaji in the men’s doubles competition at Paris 2024, in the Indian Olympic tennis team.

Bopanna was world No. 4 in the men’s doubles rankings when the qualifying window ended and made the cut easily.

Each doubles event at the Paris Olympics will feature 32 teams, two maximum per country. The first to qualify were the top 10 players in the doubles rankings, as long as they had an available partner inside the top 300 of the doubles rankings.

Consequently, Bopanna chose Balaji, who was ranked 67th. Bopanna and Balaji’s entries were confirmed by the All India Tennis Association (AITA) on June 19.

Both Bopanna and Balaji are currently competing in the Wimbledon 2024 Grand Slam event in London. Bopanna is partnering with Australia’s Matthew Ebden there while Balaji has paired up with Great Britain’s Luke Johnson.

Bopanna and Balaji will head to Hamburg and Umaag next to compete in the ATP 500 events before they head to Paris.

Nagal was also in action at Wimbledon but crashed out in the opening round in both singles and doubles.