The ITF Ruined The Davis Cup

I'm going to complain very hard today because something happened to one of my favorite competitions of all time, and that is the Davis Cup. The ITF wanted to turn the Davis Cup into the World Cup of tennis. However, you can't do that because the World Cup of football or soccer in the United States is the most popular competition in the history of sports.

Despite being held at a neutral site, it doesn't matter because people watch it on TV, and people travel to the neutral side to watch it. It makes absolutely no difference, but you're not going to be able to create that in tennis because what they did is they destroyed the number one aspect of Davis Cup that made it so fun, which is the home court advantage.

History Of Davis Cup

Let me quickly give you a history of the Davis Cup. The competition started in 1900, originally the United States against Great Britain. It was a very important competition in the world of tennis back in those days. It was more important than a Grand Slam Tournament, and, of course, over the course of the next hundred years, it lost a little bit of relevancy. This was mainly because some of the bigger names didn't play Davis Cup every single year.

They did play it; if you're looking at the big four - Murray, Djokovic, Federer, Nadal - they all won the Davis Cup. In fact, Nadal won it four times. The big names did play in the Davis Cup but not every year. Nevertheless, what makes the Davis Cup so exciting is it doesn't necessarily need bigger names. You often get to see players who are maybe not ranked as high playing a super important match in front of a big crowd.

Doubles Hype?

The Davis Cup also highlighted doubles. Throughout the course of the season, fans usually don’t watch doubles in a Grand Slam or in a regular tournament. But in the Davis Cup, people loved to watch doubles. In addition, the format of the Davis Cup made it super tense because on Friday, you had two best-of-five singles. On Saturday, you had the best-of-five doubles. Then on Sunday, you had two best-of-five singles again. The team that got three points first would win the tie.

Naturally, sometimes you would get the tie to be 2-2, and then you had a deciding singles match to determine who was going to win it. It doesn't matter what player was on the court; this was some of the most tense, some of the most entertaining, and some of the most fun tennis to watch.

Legendary Moments

Let me give you an example of some of the great Davis Cup matches. I don't remember personally because I wasn’t even born, but I did some research. One of these matches was Vilas against McEnroe in 1982 in the quarterfinals. It was one of the longest matches of all time. McEnroe ended up winning 8-6 in the fifth.

To add, there was the time when France beat the United States in 1991. Out of all the Grand Slams that fans have watched, out of all the Master Series tournaments, this one still stands out for many because the atmosphere of that match was unbelievable. It was held in France, and Henri Leconte and Guy Forget beat the United States. Forget clinched it against Sampras, and Leconte beat Sampras on the first day. You can watch some of these clips on YouTube.

Now, some of you being huge Sampras fans, an amazing win from Sampras came in the Davis Cup. In 1995, in the final, USA faced Russia. It was in Russia on an incredibly slow clay court. You guys know that clay wasn't Sampras's favorite surface, especially if it was slow.

On the first day, Sampras beat Chesnokov 6-4 in the fifth, and he fought so hard that they had to carry Sampras off the court because he had full-body cramps. Now, the next day, Sampras comes back and wins the doubles with Todd Martin. And then, on the final day, he beats the legendary Yevgeny Kafelnikov in straight sets. I can tell you that out of all of Sampras's Grand Slam titles, it's still, to this day, that Davis Cup tie stands out as Sampras' greatest achievement.

Patriotism

Another thing that I love about the Davis Cup is when small countries win the Davis Cup, which was so meaningful to them. For example, Serbia with Djokovic winning the Davis Cup in 2010 or Croatia winning the Davis Cup in 2005 and 2018. There were other countries that won the Davis Cup as well that weren't some of the big tennis nations.

So this is what we enjoyed the Davis Cup for: the passion, the emotions, and the tension that's built up. And it's for the atmosphere. Unfortunately, this has now been destroyed. Let me tell you how the Davis Cup works now. It's supposed to be the World Cup of tennis, so you have groups of teams that travel to a neutral location, and then they play out their matches in a round-robin format in advance to the next stage.

Neutral Locations

Think about the fact that you're going to have Finland and Netherlands play in Split, Croatia. How much sense does that make? Is anybody in Split going to care about watching Finland against the Netherlands? Maybe a few people, but you'll never get the passion in the crowd when you have two random countries play each other in a neutral location.

Team competitions are great in tennis because we're so used to being out there by ourselves. So it's fun to be part of a team. That's why I enjoy playing high school tennis so much. In fact, there are other tournaments in the world of tennis that are team competitions.

Back in the day, they had the World Team Cup in Dusseldorf, shortly before the French Open. A lot of the big names would play that tournament. Now, a similar tournament is held before the Australian Open, called the ATP Cup. Of course, you have the female version of the Davis Cup called the Billie Jean King Cup. There is also the Hopman Cup, in which male and female players play mixed doubles together. This used to be held before the Australian Open. Interestingly, it's after the French Open for some reason, on clay, but despite that, they still played it this year. Don’t forget about one of my favorite tournaments, which is the Laver Cup.

Olympics Eligibility

Unfortunately, the intention of getting more relevancy to Davis Cup is having the opposite effect. It has lost its relevance, and you think that the big-name players are going to play it now that the format has been shortened. No, they're not. The reason why you see big players playing Davis Cup nowadays is that they want to be eligible for the Olympics. That's the main reason.

Djokovic, of course, is a big patriot, and he won the Davis Cup with Serbia. He loves playing for his country, no doubt about that. But isn't it a little bit weird that he's playing Davis Cup a week after the US Open? The only reason why he's playing it is that he needs that eligibility for the Olympics.

Final Thoughts

If you go on the internet and if you read some of the comments of the pros, everybody is in agreement. Everybody hates what they did to Davis Cup. It's been completely ruined. Unfortunately, we as fans don't get to enjoy it anymore like we used to. And look, I'm observing other things in the world of tennis that I'm not going to get into now in detail. But I always say, if it's not broken, don't fix it.

Regarding tennis technique, in the world of tennis in general, tennis is a game of tradition. And the system is excellent. It doesn't need changing. Perhaps can you tweak it a little bit here and there? Absolutely. Hence, maybe they should have done the Davis Cup every two years or every four years. Why not do that instead of ruining the whole thing and taking away the home court advantage?