Two finalists shine, but Davis Cup is still in need of some polish
It is a big week for Davis Cup tennis, and not only because Britain is back in the final for the first time in 37 years and Belgium for the first time in 111 years.
And not only because Yannick Noah, one of the most iconic captains in the competition’s history, has just been renamed captain of the French team he twice led to victory in the 1990s. It is also a big week because of what will or will not happen in Santiago, Chile, after the International Tennis Federation elects a new president Friday after 16 years under the conservative leadership of Francesco Ricci Bitti.
If the Davis Cup is to do the right thing and evolve, the push will need to come from the new president, and the election appears to be a three-man race among David Haggerty of the United States, Juan Margets of Spain and Rene Stammbach of Switzerland.
The ITF remains the weakest ingredient in the alphabet soup that is tennis governance. The real spice is provided by the four Grand Slam tournaments, the ATP Tour and the WTA Tour. But at this stage, the whole pot could use a vigorous stir. There needs to be more collabora- tion and compromise: more collective focus on developing the sport worldwide and more emphasis on maximizing every competition that demands resources and precious time on the overstuffed calendar.
The Davis Cup, for all its charms and ringing cowbells in the stands, is not maximized. But it remains worth preserving as demonstrated again by the energy and emotions generated in Brussels and Glasgow over the weekend. In Brussels, David Goffin won two singles matches for Belgium, but Davis Cup has long specialized in thrusting supporting actors into unexpected leading roles. And Belgium only secured its 3-2 semifinal victory only after getting a final victory Sunday from 59th-ranked Steve Darcis, who collapsed to the
court after his winning overhead and was soon at the bottom of a pile of teammates.
In Glasgow, Andy Murray won two singles matches and teamed with his brother Jamie to win the doubles, with the Murrays — who grew up not far away in Dunblane — accounting for all three points in Britain’s 3-2 victory over Australia.
“There’s no doubt Davis Cup can be awesome,” Patrick McEnroe, the former U.S. captain, said Monday. “And it’s an opportunity for players who aren’t Federer, Nadal and Djokovic to get the big spotlight on them, and to me that’s even more of a reason the format and the structure of it should be looked at. Because as great as that was yesterday, let’s be honest, outside of Belgium it didn’t really resonate.”
That is, of course, an American perspective, and McEnroe, who was captain of the U.S. team for a decade, grew understandably frustrated during his tenure by the event’s inability to make inroads in the media landscape.
Cries for reform have been as common as shrieks on the court, and yet there has been no major shift in format or approach. The election could change the equation, but radical moves — like adopting a 16-team, single-site World Cup format — remain unlikely.
“That could really generate significant revenue, over $100 million if done the right way,” Haggerty, a former president of the U.S. Tennis Association, said in a telephone in- terview from Santiago. “But I don’t think that would be accepted.”
The spur to bolder thinking is that the ITF, which owns the Davis Cup, could use much more revenue than the Cup’s current annual take of about $25 million.
“No nations should lose money on our best property,” Haggerty said.
For now, only tweaks are likely. The first is the use of a fifth-set tiebreaker for all Davis Cup matches. That will be put to a vote of the general ITF membership Friday but has been approved by the Davis Cup committee.
The other change is shifting the final to a neutral site, chosen well in advance like the site of a Super Bowl or Champions League final. McEnroe and others prefer the idea of a Final Four: homeand-away-style matches in the early rounds followed by a four-team showdown at a predetermined venue.
Some of the partisan flavor would be lost with either move: Anyone who has been to a Davis Cup final in Argen- tina can appreciate just how rabid things can get. But the benefits would be planning and promotional time. Under the current structure, it was unclear until late Sunday which country would stage this year’s final in November, and finding an appropriate indoor venue on short notice is often a challenge.
The final will be in Belgium this year, perhaps in Liege, and it will be a rematch of the 1904 final won by Britain. It will also be one of the most unlikely finals in recent history. Belgium has no top 10 men’s singles players and only one in the top 50: the 15th-ranked Goffin.
Britain has a genuine star in Andy Murray. But one-man bands traditionally struggle in the Davis Cup, and Britain only rejoined the top-tier World Group in 2014 after five years in lower divisions.
Murray is all-in now, so much so that he is considering skipping the ATP Finals in London to prepare for the Davis Cup, particularly if the Belgians choose to play on indoor clay. Skipping the finals would not sit well with the ATP, as its chairman, Chris Kermode, made clear in a statement Monday.
Still, it is hard to argue with Murray’s priorities. Britain has not been to the Davis Cup final since 1978; it has not won since 1936.
In a year in which he has not won a major, this is clearly the biggest late-season adrenaline rush available, just as it was for Novak Djokovic in 2010 when he led Serbia to its first title, or as it was for Roger Federer last year when he and Stan Wawrinka led Switzerland to its first.
If all the superstars made the event a priority at the same time, there might be no need for reform. But the biggest rivalries have played out elsewhere in this golden era, and the Davis Cup has become much more consolation prize than first prize.
“My idea was never to win it twice,” Federer said Sunday after helping Switzerland avoid relegation in a playoff match versus the Netherlands.
Bring on the election.