This was the 13th (medal) appearance of the men's singles tennis event. The event has been held at every Summer Olympics where tennis has been on the program: from 1896 to 1924 and then from 1988 to the current program. Demonstration events were held in 1968 and 1984.
The number one seed was Roger Federer of Switzerland, making his third Olympic appearance. But number-two seed Rafael Nadal of Spain was favored, with recent wins at the French Open and Wimbledon and closing in on taking the #1 ranking from Federer.[2] Nadal was making his Olympic debut along with Serbian player Novak Djokovic, who joined the rest of the Big Three in the top three seeds. Andy Murray of Great Britain also competed at the Olympics for the first time. Four of the eight quarterfinalists from 2004 returned: gold medalist Nicolás Massú and bronze medalist Fernando González of Chile and quarterfinalists Tomáš Berdych of the Czech Republic and Mikhail Youzhny of Russia.
The People's Republic of China, El Salvador, Latvia, Serbia, and Togo each made their debut in the event. France made its 12th appearance, most among all nations, having missed only the 1904 event.
Qualification for the men's singles was primarily through the ATP ranking list of 9 June 2008. Nations had been limited to four players in the event since the 2000 Games. There were 64 quota places available for men's singles. The first 56 were assigned through the world ranking. There were two Tripartite Commission invitation places and 6 final qualification places allocated by the ITF based on continental and national representation along with world rankings.
Competition format
The competition was a single-elimination tournament with a bronze medal match. Matches were in best-of-3 sets, except for the final which was in best-of-5 sets. No tiebreak was played in the final set.