Tennis

Olympic tennis is not like the Davis Cup or Fed Cup, annual competitions pitting nation against nation in a team-style format involving individual matches. The London Games will be similar to a Grand Slam event, but with fewer players.

The four tennis competitions on the Olympic program are:
· Men's singles
· Women's singles
· Men's doubles
· Women's doubles
· Mixed doubles  

Wimbledon will be used for the Tennis competition of the 2012 Games. Up to 30,000 people will be able to watch the players compete

Tournament draws
In London, the tennis competition involves single-elimination tournaments for each of the five events.

Sixteen players are seeded in singles and eight teams are seeded in doubles with the remaining players or teams drawn into brackets. Where practical, no two players from the same country are placed in the same quarter of the draw. Seedings are based on the latest international rankings.

Progression
Adhering to the typical protocol of tennis tournaments, players advance through the draw by winning matches. Losers are eliminated until the field is down to four players/teams. At this stage, the semifinal winners advance to meet in the gold-medal final; the semifinal losers face each other to determine who wins bronze.

Match format
All tennis matches at the 2012 Olympics will be best-of-three sets, except for the men's singles and doubles finals, which will be best-of-five. All men's matches used to be best of five until the format was changed after the Barcelona Games to encourage more participation, with the tournament generally being played on the eve of the U.S. Open.