There's No Way the 2024 US Women's Olympic Tennis Team Isn't the Richest Sports Team In History

They have "topple a small government" money thanks to two players

On account of how up in arms everyone is about Caitlin Clark being left off of the US Women’s Olympic basketball team (even though it was the correct choice), another US Olympic team roster controversy is getting way overshadowed.

It’s a controversy that also doubles as incontrovertible proof that the American sports media could not give less of a fuck about American tennis.

The gist of what happened is that four American players – Madison Keys, Frances Tiafoe, Ben Shelton, and Sebastian Korda – all opted to skip the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

That was surprising to me if for no other reason than none of those players ever win shit and should count their lucky stars they even had the opportunity to be on that roster.

With all due respect, of course.

Which brings me to what I said about American sports media and how little they care about tennis.

Sports Illustrated, one of the most revered outlets in all of sports, ran a story about this on a section of their site called “Serve” that, as the name implies, is all about the hospitality industry. Just joking! It’s about tennis. So you KNOW they care a lot!

Except they clearly don’t, because they blow this story starting with the first word of the headline.

The way that headline is worded makes it seem like the four highest ranked American tennis players, aka this country’s four best players, all opted out of the Olympics. That would indeed be a pretty shocking turn of events … if it happened.

It did not happen. In fact, the literal exact opposite is true. The actual top six US tennis players by ranking are, in order:

• Coco Gauff (#2 women’s player in the world, you’ve probably heard of her)

• Jessica Pegula (#5 women’s player in the world, more on her in a minute)

• Danielle Collins (#11 women’s player in the world, kind of a jerk)

• Tommy Paul (#12 men’s player in the world, no relation)

• Madison Keys (#12 women’s player in the world, hates America)

• Taylor Fritz (#13 men’s player in the world, I sometimes call him “Fraylor Titz” and it’s never not fun)

With the exception of the aforementioned Madison Keys, everyone on that list is playing for their respective teams at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Five of the actual top six ranked American tennis players all opted in, despite what that Sports Illustrated headline implies to the contrary.

What Sports Illustrated means to say is “Four Top US Tennis Players Opted Out of Paris Olympics.” So not THE top four, just four who are ranked among the top American players.

I assumed this was just a typo and that things would be clarified in the article, but nah. Here’s another quote:

They follow that up with a tweet from tennis commentator Jose Morgado as evidence of their claim, except they totally misunderstood the tweet in question. It says:

I do accept that it’s a little unclear, but he’s not saying that those are the four best American players overall. He’s saying all of those players are ranked in the top four among American players, who you then have to divide between men and women, for a total of eight players.

Madison Keys is ranked #12 among women players overall, and that makes her the fourth highest ranked American women’s player. There are three US women’s players ranked above her.

Ben Shelton, Sebastian Korda and Frances Tiafoe are ranked 14th, 23rd, and 28th in the world, respectively, among male players. It’s just that American men’s tennis has been in a bad place for a long time, so those kinda unremarkable rankings are good enough to make them the third, fourth, and fifth highest ranked American male players.

Can a person be forgiven for misinterpreting that tweet to mean that America’s four best and highest ranked tennis players pulled out of the Olympics? Sure, as long as you’re not writing about tennis for a straight up institution like Sports Illustrated on a section of their site dedicated to tennis.

That got me wondering what tennis aficionado at SI got this story so very wrong, so I scrolled down to the author bio. It was penned by a writer named Pat Benson. And what does Pat do?

Aaaaand that explains it. Even the most casual of tennis fans would immediately recognize that the players named in that article do not constitute “the top four US tennis players.”

If nothing else, a quick glance at the current women’s tennis rankings would’ve revealed that it is statistically impossible for that headline to be correct. There are three American women players ranked above Madison Keys.

Same with Ben Shelton, the highest ranked male player mentioned in the story, who has two American male players directly ahead of him.

So it’s not just that the writer misunderstood the tweet that this story is based on, they also didn’t even bother looking at the most basic information possible to confirm that what they thought the tweet was saying was actually correct.

I know tennis isn’t the hugest sport in America, but it at least deserves a little better than that from an outlet like Sports Illustrated.

Anyway, if you want a real story about the 2024 US Olympic tennis team, we should be talking about the player who replaced Madison Keys on the roster, 17th ranked Emma Navarro.

You probably owe her dad money.

Well, her and Jessica Pegula.

Her dad could buy you if he wanted to.

With the two of them aboard Team USA, there is zero doubt in my mind that, if we’re talking the collective net worth of the players themselves, this is the wealthiest Olympic team in sports history. Ever. Any sport. USA men’s basketball included.

If you follow the NFL or NHL even a little, you probably already know that Jessica Pegula, women’s world #5 and the second highest ranked American player overall, is the daughter of Terry and Kim Pegula, the owners of both the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres. At last check her parents’ net worth clocked in at an eat-the-rich worthy $6.8 billion dollars. They don’t call her the world’s richest tennis player for nothing!

See?

However, as Pegula has pointed out in the past, she doesn’t actually have that money herself. Her parents have it. And that’s a fair point! For all we know she doesn’t even get along with her parents and is just out here struggling to survive on the $13 million dollars she’s earned playing tennis like the rest of us commoners do.

Also, whether she’s still the world’s richest tennis player is open for debate thanks to her Team USA teammate Emma Navarro.

Her Wikipedia page kinda dances around her background. The “personal life” section is exactly one sentence that just says:

Yeah? Anything else you wanna tell us? Like maybe why your dad and granddad BOTH have Wikipedia pages?

It’s because her dad, Ben Navarro, is the founder and CEO of Sherman Financial Group, LLC, which owns Credit One Bank.

In fairness to the Pegula’s though, I’m exaggerating when I say Emma Navarro poses a challenge to Jessica’s title of world’s richest tennis player. You may recall that the Pegula’s net worth is estimated to be around $6.8 billion dollars.

Well, Ben Navarro’s net worth is a comparatively impoverished $1.5 billion dollars. This pissant is only the 2,103rd richest person in the world!

Why even bother being rich if you’re not gonna crack the top 2,000? He’s not even rich enough to have that piece of damning information scrubbed from his Wikipedia page!

Hey, learn something from your daughter, dude. What if she was content to just be the 2,103rd best tennis player in the world? She wouldn’t be replacing Madison Keys at the Olympics next month, that’s for sure!