MÁLAGA (Spain) – Someday soon, the Davis Cup will be cited in the history books of sport as an example of one of the most incomprehensible and damaging decisions ever seen.
Because Malaga is hosting a good Finals this week, yes, because the quarter-final series that Italy won 2-1 against Argentina was very attractive, yes, but the truth is that this Davis Cup is no longer the Davis Cup.
Can you imagine what it would have been like to play Italy versus Argentina at the Foro Itálico or the Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club, two legendary sporting venues? With thousands and thousands of home fans jumping in the stands, with the enormous pressure of playing at home and the enormous pressure of being the visitor, with the excitement and euphoria of having the Davis Cup ‘at home’ reaching far beyond tennis.
‘I know both stadiums, I’ve played in both, I know the atmosphere there,’ said Lorenzo Musetti on Thursday after losing to Argentina’s Francisco Cerundolo. ‘But this format had the advantage that it allowed us to see the Italian girls winning the Billie Jean King Cup.’
Cerundolo fell at the halfway mark. ‘It’s true that this is a different format, but just today there was a very nice atmosphere, full of Argentinians and Italians. It was a Davis Cup atmosphere. The old format has good things, you play at home or away, and that gives a lot more people the opportunity to see a match at a high level. There are good things about the new format and good things about the old.’
Cerundolo is too young to have experienced the Davis Cup as a tennis player, but he did experience it as a fan.
The Davis Cup was stripped of its soul, its distinctive gene, what made it unique, seductive and legendary: the home and away series.
The adventure of playing on the grass of New Delhi, the ultra-fast court of Stockholm, the parquet floor of Asunción, the clay watered over and over again in Buenos Aires to make it slow. And the adventure of being local, of welcoming the best in the world at home and opening top-level tennis to people who would never have dreamed of seeing such players a metre away. The adventure of playing in a final, with the rival being the home team, and still beating them.
Those series in which the improbable became the norm were much more than the salt of the Davis Cup, they were its backbone, they were its soul.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) was seduced in 2018 by the siren songs of former Spanish footballer Gerard Piqué, head of the Kosmos group, and handed over that treasure, its treasure. The home and away series spread across the globe vanished – only a few lower-level regionals remained – and the tournament began to be played in just a few venues and always in the Northern Hemisphere.
It is true that the ITF took the step, convinced that it had to do so after years of exhausting and growing pettiness on the part of many players who turned their backs on the tournament and thus diminished its importance and interest.
There was a time when players complained because the Davis Cup did not award points for the world ranking, but when it finally did, the complaint was that the points were unfair to those players who did not have the opportunity to play in it.
The players also complained about the number of weeks the Davis Cup took up in the calendar, the psychological and physical wear and tear, the inhumanity of playing in such a long season.
The season was shortened, the Davis Cup compacted its weeks to give the players more free time, but the complaints continued and the players added more and more exhibitions. There is a lot of money there; in Davis, very little.
The Davis Cup also gave up a day: in the surviving home-and-away series there are no more Friday matches, no more best-of-five-set battles. If the important thing has to be difficult, then it is Davis itself that detracts from its own importance. From being unique, it has become too much like any other tournament on the circuit.
Now, for 2025, the ITF announced more home and away series, seven in total in September, but will keep the Finals concentrated in one city for the series from the quarter-finals onwards. An attempt to recover the soul of Davis Cup, a belated recognition of the mistake, a huge mistake, which was to hand over to the commercialised selfishness of the tour that which was precious, because precious is that which no other has.
