It’s money or tradition as Davis Cup fate in minnows’ hands

NATIONS who will never win the Davis Cup have the power to save its traditions or cash in as the International Tennis Federation board wants them to do.

Davis Cup aficionados including Grand Slam winners Ken Rosewall, Pat Cash, Yannick Noah and Yevgeny Kafelnikov reeled this week when the ITF board recommended an elite 18-nation event which would axe many of the 118year-old competition’s bestloved aspects.

A total of 147 member nations will vote in August on whether to adopt the proposal to have no more home-andaway ties for elite nations, who would play an annual oneweek tournament from 2019.

Beneath the 18-nation tour- nament, all other tiers of Davis Cup will be played as it is, with home and away ties.

It leaves the representatives from largely unaffected tennis nations such as Liechtenstein, Benin, Moldova, Morocco and San Marino to wrestle with whether to protect the traditions of Davis Cup or agree to a change which would also land the ITF with a $3 billion windfall over 25 years from Europe- an promoters. The member nations last year knocked back an ITF Board recommendation to play matches over best-of-three sets.

Rosewall noted the hope that they would back the traditions of the competition again in August, and that their predecessors had needed some convincing in the 1960s over Open tennis before adopting it in 1968.

The ITF’s crusading president American David Haggerty, backed by many broadcasters, also wants to do away with five rubbers per Davis Cup tie, with best-of-five set matches.

Matches would be best-ofthree sets under the ITF board’s recommendation and ties would comprise of only two singles matches and one doubles encounter.

Dual Australian Davis Cup winner Todd Woodbridge said the ITF needed to be sure the top players would back the 18nation concept.

“Best-of-three sets tennis, you change outcomes because there are more upsets than in best of five. That’s a concern for me,’’ Woodbridge said.

“I think there has to be some balance between change and what we have.”