Sport Comment: Tennis is continuing to ignore its winning lottery ticket
WHILE the Champions League, Grand National, Boat Race and Heineken Cup promise one of the great weeks of the year in the next seven days, the quarter-finals of one of international sport’s most undervalued jewels will be taking place at the same time, and remarkably Great Britain are involved.
The Czech Republic play Japan, Germany meet France, Switzerland face Kazakhstan, and we are up against Italy. The sport? Tennis. The event? The Davis Cup.
This may come as something of a surprise to you, but don’t feel bad about that. The Davis Cup comes as a surprise to most people, appearing and re-appearing at apparently random moments during the sporting calendar, and yet producing some of the most dramatic tennis action seen all year.
If you’ve never been to a full-throttle, crazily partisan Davis Cup tie you have missed out. Rafael Nadal playing for Spain turns a tennis court into Camp Nou. Novak Djokovic lifting the trophy for Serbia in 2010 prompted the multi-Grand Slam winner to describe the moment as “the greatest of my life and the greatest sporting achievement ever by my country”.
However, as things stand, the Davis Cup finds itself much where the Ryder Cup did before Great Britain’s team was augmented by Seve Ballesteros’s European allies. It’s there, but the governing bodies of the international game and the men’s tour tolerate it on sufferance. Players opt in and out with no sanction, depending on tournament commitments and the surface that’s been chosen for the tie. Should Britain win, the semi-final will be in four months’ time and the final just before Christmas. Top scheduling.
There has been much talk of a World Cup to replace the Davis Cup, played every two or four years in a one-month block after the US Open, but just when the campaign seems to be gathering momentum, it stalls because of vested interests from sponsors or television companies.
The World Cup concept should be embraced, or the Davis Cup restored to its proud position of yesteryear when all the top guys played and John McEnroe imploded in search of glory for the USA and Bjorn Borg established a record, which stands to this day, of 33 consecutive singles triumphs for Sweden.
Team tennis is something special, and Andy Murray will feel pressure like rarely before in the furnace of Naples this weekend. The Davis Cup remains a winning lottery ticket for tennis that the sport inexplicably refuses to cash in.