The men's doubles was one of two

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

events on the

tennis at the 1896 Summer Olympics At the 1896 Summer Olympics, two tennis events were contested, both for men. They began on 8 April and continued on 9 April, 10 April, and 11 April.Dates given are in the Gregorian calendar. Greece still used the Julian calendar at the time. Accor ...

programme. The six pairs that entered were seeded into a single elimination tournament. Only five actually competed, hailing from four nations but entering as three

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

teams and a pair of mixed teams. It was the only event in the

1896 Summer Olympics The 1896 Summer Olympics ( el, Θερινοί Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες 1896, Therinoí Olympiakoí Agónes 1896), officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad ( el, Αγώνες της 1ης Ολυμπιάδας, Agónes tis 1is Ol ...

that had mixed teams (the other two non-individual events, in gymnastics, featured only non-mixed teams). The doubles team of Kasdaglis and Petrokokkinos appears in the IOC results database as a Greek team. Kasdaglis is listed as Greek in the database for the singles event: however, as he was a Greek national residing in Alexandria after years in Great Britain, he is listed as Egyptian or as British in some sources. Petrokokkinos, who did not win a singles medal, is not identified with any nation in the IOC database; however, all sources which give a nationality for Petrokokkinos list him as Greek.

Background

This was the first appearance of the men's doubles tennis. The event has been held at every Summer Olympics where tennis has been on the program: from 1896 to 1924 and then from 1988 to the current program. A demonstration event was held in 1968. None of the leading players of the time, such as Wimbledon champion

Harold Mahony Harold Segerson Mahony (13 February 1867 – 27 June 1905) was a Scottish-born Irish tennis player who is best known for winning the singles title at the Wimbledon Championships in 1896. His career lasted from 1888 until his death in 1905. Maho ...

, U.S champion

Robert Wrenn Robert Duffield Wrenn (September 20, 1873 – November 12, 1925) was an American left-handed tennis player, four-time U.S. singles championship winner, and one of the first inductees in the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Biography Wrenn w ...

William Larned William Augustus Larned (December 30, 1872 – December 16, 1926) was an American tennis player who was active at the beginning of the 20th century. He won seven singles titles at the U.S. National Championships. Biography Larned was born ...

Wilfred Baddeley Wilfred Baddeley (11 January 1872 – 24 January 1929) was a British male tennis player and the elder of the Baddeley twins. Career Wilfred, the better-known competitor, made his debut at Wimbledon in 1889 and he went on to win singles tit ...

, participated.

Competition format

Under ancient Greek single-elimination tournament rules, there were no brackets as under modern single-elimination rules; instead, all participants in a round were paired off with one bye if a round had an odd number of participants left. This format could result in a semifinals round with only 3 competitors (as happened in both the 1896 wrestling and doubles tennis events, which started with 5 wrestlers/pairs: the first round had two matches, with one wrestler/pair having a bye, and the second round had only one match, with another wrestler/pair having a bye; a modern tournament would have had one match in the first round with three byes, leading to two semifinals). The organizers avoided this problem in the singles tennis by dividing the players into four groups, with each group playing a single elimination tournament and the winner of each group advancing to the semifinals.

Schedule

The competition took placed over 4 days, with one day of rest before the final.

Draw

The

International Society of Olympic Historians The International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 with the purpose of promoting and studying the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games. The majority of recent books on the Olympic Games have been ...

gives only five teams; according to them Frank and George Marshall did not participate. The score of the final is not certain; Le Velo is the only 1896 source to give a score and provides 5–7, 6–4, 6–1. Boland's journal has 5–7, 6–3, 6–3.

Results summary

External links

* (Digitally available a

* (Excerpt available a

*
ITF, 2008 Olympic Tennis Event Media Guide
Men's doubles tennis at the Summer Olympics, 1896 {{DEFAULTSORT:Tennis at the 1896 Summer Olympics - Men's doubles Men's doubles