This weekend, Davis Cup teams from the United States and Australia will square off in Brisbane, but few Americans—even ardent tennis fans—will be paying attention. This could be blamed on drastic time-zone disparities (though the Australian Open this winter attracted the most U.S. viewers in years); or the nagging lack of Americans at the top of the men’s game (though, at the moment, Jack Sock is No. 7 in the world in A.T.P. points earned this calendar year); or the fact that sports fans sick to death of the gray, gray winter have both baseball and the Masters to choose from (though there is talk among golf nuts that, thanks to a February heat wave, the azaleas at Augusta National are already past their peak). But the demise of interest in the Davis Cup is not just an American phenomenon, and it is not only a matter of viewership. Two months ago, in the first round of international Davis Cup play, Novak Djokovic was the only top-ten player to participate.
“No one cares, so why should I?” That’s John McEnroe in his autobiography, guessing at the explanation for Pete Sampras’s nonchalance after Sampras won the 1995 David Cup final, or “tie,” against Russia almost singlehandedly—winning both his singles “rubbers,” or matches, and his doubles rubber, too. (Part of the charm of the Davis Cup—or the fustiness, if that’s your view—is its plummy jargon, which dates back to 1900, when four members of the Harvard tennis team, one of them Dwight Davis, challenged “the British Isles” to a weekend-long tournament in Boston.) By the nineties, fans were already tuning out, and soon players began to as well. In the fifties and sixties, players like Rod Laver and Arthur Ashe competed for their national teams with the same fervor and focus they brought to Grand Slam tournaments. But the professionalization of tennis, beginning in 1968 with the arrival of the “open era,” changed just about everything except the dimensions of the court. For years, the International Tennis Federation, which oversees Davis Cup play, appeared to think it had a marketing problem rather than an existential one. It pointed to nations like Croatia, Czechoslovakia, and, just last fall, Argentina, which embraced Davis Cup play and revelled in their victories in home-court final ties. It took to calling the Davis Cup the World Cup of tennis. It’s not. But maybe it could be.
Early last month, I.T.F. leaders voted to shorten Davis Cup matches from best-of-five sets, like those at the four Grand Slam tournaments, to best-of-three—though there is talk that the best-of-five might be preserved for the final Cup tie. The federation is also reportedly considering having all ties reduced from three-day events to two. Any such changes must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the I.T.F.’s full membership—two hundred and eleven national associations in all—which is a significant reason why changes have been few, and slow. The vote is expected to come in August, at the federation’s annual meeting, being held this year far from the tennis circuit, in Ho Chi Minh City. Changes, if agreed upon, would take effect beginning in 2018.
The I.T.F. has a new president, David Haggerty, the first American to head the federation since the nineteen-seventies, and from the moment he took over the post, eighteen months ago, he has said that revamping the Davis Cup is one of his priorities. Already, tiebreaks have been introduced in the fifth set of all matches to shorten them. Shaving the number of sets and the number of days per tie will make a weekend of Davis Cup competition much like a final weekend of tennis at most other pro tournaments, duration-wise, whether you’re a player, a ticket holder, or a television viewer. “I think the main drivers of our strategy are to increase top player participation and enhance the experience for the fans, the spectators and the broadcasters,” Haggerty told the Times’ Christopher Clarey recently. “Two five-set matches in one day can be very exciting, but it can also be very long.”
Haggerty has also spoken in support of an idea that John McEnroe has been championing for years: a Final Four for the Davis Cup team semifinalists, played at a neutral site determined a year or two in advance. And why stop there? For the Davis Cup to become a World Cup of tennis, it will have to happen less often: the A.T.P. calendar is simply too crowded with tourneys for players to commit each year to what can be, if you reach the final, four weekends of tennis, and without the kind of pay top players generally receive.
It is not hard to imagine a Davis Cup tournament held every two or even three or four years, with all play condensed to, say, sixteen teams, chosen on the basis of the combined ranking points of each member-nation’s top four players. Over the course of two late-summer weeks, the teams, seeded according to rankings, would play knockout ties to determine the Cup winner. A predetermined neutral site would allow for marketing and big-league TV bids. Ranking points would be awarded on the level of a Grand Slam. It would matter to players and fans alike.
Meanwhile, if you are lucky enough to have the Tennis Channel, you can see some terrific Davis Cup action this weekend. Jack Sock, at twenty-four, has emerged as America’s best player on the men’s side. His forehand is among the most oddly contorted but lethal in the game, with Rafael Nadal-like topspin and line-glancing accuracy when he backs up and around a ball hit to his backhand side and strikes that forehand inside out. He also has an effectively high-bouncing kick serve, which has won him lots of cheap points not only in singles but in doubles. He may be playing doubles along with singles in Brisbane, if the captain of the U.S. team, Jim Courier, chooses to use him for the doubles rubber. (Among Sock’s achievements are a doubles title at Wimbledon, in 2014, and a gold medal in mixed doubles at the Olympic Games in Rio, last summer.) It’s his singles play, though, that Courier will likely be counting on. Sock reached the semifinals last month at Indian Wells, where he lost to a resurgent Roger Federer, and he reached the quarter-finals two weeks later at the Miami Open, where he lost to Nadal. He also happens to be that rare tennis player who leaves whatever angst he may have in the locker room. He runs and swings freely and smiles an unpretending Nebraska smile.
He’s a perfect contrast, in other words, to Nick Kyrgios, who, at only twenty-one, will lead the Australian team, and who is, of course, the game’s troubled analysand. Sportswriters, TV commentators, coaches, fellow-players, fans—they’ve all spent the last couple of years trying to figure out what brings on his on-court outbursts and listless funks; who can help him (he entered therapy at the end of last year, after receiving a three-week ban as a result of his on-court antics); and why he can’t just cut it out and use his prodigious gifts—the most remarkable of his generation—to win, improve, and win some more. Whether it’s the therapist, or, as Kyrgios has suggested, the calming influence of his girlfriend, fellow-tennis pro Ajla Tomljanović, Kyrgios has been winning and improving this year. He began February by blistering the Czech team’s Jan Šátral (6–2, 6–3,6–2) in the first round of Davis Cup play. Five weeks later, at Indian Wells, I watched from a courtside seat as Kyrgios did much the same thing to Djokovic, repeatedly launching aces and service winners against the best returner in the game and dictating points with a crosscourt backhand that can be as hard and hard-angled as any I’ve seen. Afterward, I found myself thinking about how relaxed he’d seemed that morning when I happened upon him on an outer court, practicing doubles with his partner, the aging—he’s forty—Serbian doubles great Nenad Zimonjić. There, Kyrgios was all warm laughs and purposeful reps. Tennis can be such a lonely game; being part of a team can ease so much.
Which is exactly what tennis players talk about when they talk about the Davis Cup. Representing your nation, knowing you have teammates with you and behind you: it’s a powerful thing for players. Carrying Serbia to victory in the 2010 Davis Cup helped to give Djokovic the confidence he previously lacked and ushered in a span when he played more or less unrivalled tennis. Could the same be said about Andy Murray, who led Great Britain over Belgium in the 2015 final—then rose to No. 1 in 2016? And will we be saying something similar, someday, about Nick Kyrgios?
I hope so. Men’s tennis needs the Davis Cup. And those in charge of it need to find ways to bring it into the twenty-first century.
