For

We don't wish to keep harping back to Ireland's first gold medal, but John Pius Boland's gold in the men's singles appears to put tennis into a proper Olympic context. That is, it was one of the few sports which featured in the first modern Olympics in 1896.

So tennis moved on to become professional, and throughout the years of hypocrisy and double standards in Olympic sport the game lost favour with the guardians of amateurism within the IOC. But even the Olympics couldn't maintain the sham of amateur status.

Tennis came back and now the game has a high profile within the Olympics. Steffi Graf, Jennifer Capriati and Lindsay Davenport have each won gold in the women's singles as has Andre Agassi in the men's singles. In a sport which is notable for its overly-feted stars, the Olympics have attracted the top players. Tennis has history, popularity, and is relatively untainted with performance enhancing drugs. That gives it what many sports have yet to achieve - credibility.

Johnny Watterson

Against

Why should any sport be allowed into the Olympics when it can't claim to be innocent of even one of the seven deadly sins. As if there wasn't enough exposure on that grand slam circuit, these players have the greed to want more. Ah, sure the Olympic Games wouldn't be the same without us they sigh, envious that other sports would get some television coverage ahead of their own.

None of them will try to disguise their pride of "wearing their national colours", not that they wouldn't swap it in a minute for three stripes and a blank cheque. Just hope they don't double-fault in the bronze medal play-off or else all wroth from hell is likely to break lose. And how many bananas can one possibly eat during a tennis match? Pure gluttony if you ask me.

And all this in between the slothful carry-on of ball boys handing them their towels and fetching their water. Worst of all though, there's the lust. As if there isn't enough of it around Wimbledon, here we go again with the full colour spreads of Anna Kournikova. Spare us all and send it back to the discontinued heap.

Ian O'Riordan