World No. 48 Pedro Martinez was an Olympics hopeful, but his dream of representing his county in Paris in late July will be unfulfilled, and he's not happy about it.
The Olympic tennis tournament is scheduled to kick off on July 27th, where 64 men will compete in the singles tournament to win gold, silver, and bronze medals. The top 56 players, based on the ranking of June 10th, will automatically qualify for the draw.
One of those who aspired to get a spot in the Olympics was Pedro Martinez, who worked painstakingly to get his ranking inside the Top 50. Although he has met this requirement, another criterion is based on the maximum number of participants per country.
This is restricted to the four best-ranked players in the Top 56 for one nation. Martinez is currently the third-best-ranked Spaniard in the ATP rankings behind World No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.
However, because two Spaniards will use their protected ranking (PR) to play at the event, the 27-year-old will miss out. These are 2008 Beijing gold medalist Rafael Nadal, who might be playing his last tournament, and 2020 Tokyo bronze medalist Pablo Carreno Busta.
The PR entitles players who were injured for a minimum period of six months to use their original ranking at the time of the injury break and can enter into nine ATP events upon their return.
But Martinez has shared a scathing view of this protected ranking system in quotes shared with Roland Garros. He termed it "unfair" and "injustice" to miss the tournament not because of injury.
"In this case, the protected ranking is an injustice because neither of us has missed the Olympic Games due to being injured, regardless of whether it is Rafa, who we all want to see in the Olympic Games, including me as a fan."
"I don’t see it as entirely fair. It’s as if I get injured now and in four years I use the protected ranking in the Los Angeles Games. I think that this year I deserve to go to the Olympic Games - and not going because of a situation like this is a bit unfair. But you can’t control it and that’s it."
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