Nearly two weeks had passed since Rajeev Ram had again come painfully close to an Olympic gold medal.
“It’s still hard,” he said in an interview this month. “Even many days after now, it’s still hard. I knew what a big opportunity this was.”
In Ram’s Olympic debut in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, he settled for silver in mixed doubles with Venus Williams. Eight years later in Paris, it was silver again, this time in men’s doubles.
Ram and fellow American Austin Krajicek did get their scrapbook moment by eliminating the Spanish superstars Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz in a quarterfinal in front of a center-court crowd at Roland Garros that was hardly in Team U.