En route to his bronze medal, Carreño Busta defeated the world's top-two ranked players – Djokovic and the ROC's Daniil Medvedev.

[2] Andy Murray was the two-time defending gold medalist, but withdrew before his first-round match due to a quadriceps strain.

1 Djokovic was attempting to win the fourth of five components of a potential Golden Slam (and to be the third man to do so across an entire career, after Andre Agassi and Rafael Nadal) and to complete the Career Super Slam (he would be the second man to achieve this, after Agassi), having already won the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon Championships that year, but he lost to Zverev in the semifinals.

Novak Djokovic was the favourite entering the tournament having won three consecutive Grand Slam titles earlier in the year.

Top players not present, along with two-time defending champion Andy Murray, included Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Matteo Berrettini, Dominic Thiem, Roberto Bautista Agut, and Stan Wawrinka.

[5] In an unusual career accomplishment qualification process, one spot is reserved for a former Olympic or Grand Slam champion that has not qualified through the current world rankings.

[5] For the 2020 Games, this 'career wild card' quota was initially held by reigning double Olympic champion and three-time Grand Slam winner Andy Murray, but he was given a direct entry after several players withdrew.

In a change from previous Olympics editions, the men’s final was played over three rather than five sets, for compensation to players who are competing in the later stages in all three categories: singles, doubles and mixed.