The fifteen entrants were seeded into a single-elimination tournament, with thirteen competing.

None of the leading players of the time, such as Wimbledon champion Harold Mahony, U.S champion Robert Wrenn, William Larned or Wilfred Baddeley, participated.

[2][3] 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 three competitors, as happened in both the 1896 wrestling and doubles tennis events, which started with five 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 International Society of Olympic Historians gives only thirteen players.