Rainer Schüttler, who was propelled up the rankings by his semi-final appearance at Wimbledon,[13][14] went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and won his right to play at the Olympics, provoking a hostile response from the ITF, as it was a deviation from their original regulations.

[17][18] The four official criteria for ITF place consideration were world ranking (no numeric specification), whether the country was represented in the tennis event, the number of players on site, and geographical location.

Accompanying Sun were multiple Grand Slam doubles titlists Max Mirnyi and Jonas Björkman (who was retiring at the end of the year),[19] nascent stars such as Kei Nishikori and Kevin Anderson, and defending champion Nicolás Massú.

[9] However, many players expressed their enthusiasm for the Games, including Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal,[27] Jonas Björkman, Nicolás Massú,[19] Andy Murray,[28] Jelena Janković,[29] Elena Dementieva,[30] Alicia Molik,[19] and Venus and Serena Williams.

In the calendar year preceding the 2008 Olympics, there was a shift at the hierarchy of men's tennis as Rafael Nadal displaced Roger Federer as the world number one, after his record consecutive 237-week stay at the top of the rankings.

[34][35][36][37] Three Chinese nationals appeared in the men's draw, but none qualified automatically, with Sun Peng relying on the places issued by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), and Yu Xinyuan and Zeng Shao-Xuan replacing withdrawn players as alternates.

He would also be elected as Team Spain's flagbearer for the opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 after being forced to withdraw from the London 2012 tournament at Wimbledon due to tendinitis.

[40] Since then, three women had held the number one spot, and two, Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic, had grappled with injury and poor form after successful first halves of the year.

They were Li Na, who was a semi-finalist at the Tier I Doha before succumbing to injury for most of the Summer;[43] Zheng Jie, who raised hopes by becoming the first Chinese player to reach the semi-finals of a Grand Slam singles tournament at Wimbledon;[44] and Peng Shuai.

Play did not begin at the scheduled time of 10 a.m., and was delayed until 12.53 p.m., when number eight seed James Blake began his match against Chris Guccione on the Centre Court.

[48] Blake said that he had been inspired to victory by fellow American Michael Phelps, who won his first of eight gold medals in swimming, in the 400 metre individual medley, on the same day.

In the women's draw, Dane Caroline Wozniacki, Australian Samantha Stosur, Italian Francesca Schiavone, and Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova all progressed.

Defending champion Nicolás Massú defeated Steve Darcis (Belgium), and Rafael Nadal came through against Potito Starace (Italy) in three sets, in what the BBC described as a "tough" match.

Along with Ferrer, number fourteen seed Nicolás Almagro and the unseeded Tommy Robredo also exited, meaning that three of the four Spanish representatives in the men's singles went out.

Second seed Jelena Janković won, as did American Serena Williams, Russian Elena Dementieva, Slovakian Daniela Hantuchová, and Frenchwoman Alizé Cornet amongst others, in their first round matches.

The previous record was held by Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde (Australia) and Jacco Eltingh and Paul Haarhuis (Netherlands), who competed a 54-game match (6–2, 5–7, 18–16) at the 1996 event.

Elsewhere, defending champions Massu and Gonzalez exited, Steve Darcis and Olivier Rochus (Belgium) defeated Guillermo Cañas and David Nalbandian (Argentina) in a match that exceeded two and a half hours, and Canada's only doubles team of Nestor and Niemeyer lost to the Murray brothers of Andy and Jamie (Great Britain).

However, Federer's countryman Wawrinka exited after losing to Austrian Jürgen Melzer, in what the ITF commentary team called a "bad loss".

[12][53] Seeds who progressed in the women's singles included Janković (Serbia), the Williams sisters (United States), Vera Zvonareva (Russia), and Victoria Azarenka (Belarus).

One of the Chinese hopefuls, Peng, had the President of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG), Liu Qui, courtside for her match against Alizé Cornet, but she was beaten in two sets.

[12][53] In the doubles, Bahamian Mark Knowles, a Grand Slam champion and the world number seven coming into the event, was knocked out, partnering Devin Mullings, by the Bryan brothers (United States).