He’s an American, the first to head the ITF since the 1970s, and he told Christopher Clarey of The New York Times last fall that he is in favor of an idea John McEnroe has been championing for a number of years: creating a Final Four for the Davis Cup team semifinalists, to be played at a neutral site. Haggerty acknowledges that such a change will not be an easy sell to the national tennis associations whose approval by vote would be required. They tend to be tennis traditionalists, and there is a lot of tradition in the 115-year history of the Davis Cup. What there no longer is—and this is what Haggerty has going for him as he seeks to evolve the format—is a lot of revenue. Last year, over the course of nearly ninety events around the world, Davis Cup tennis generated only $25 million. In two weeks of tennis, the U.S. Open generated ten times that amount. As refreshing as it is to hear that Haggerty is committed to changing the format of the Davis Cup, his thinking doesn’t go nearly far enough. It’s a contest born of a late Victorian ideal of upper-class leisure and gentlemanly competition: Why not reimagine it for an age of professionalism and TV viewing (and social media), the way the four majors have? If you were designing an international team-tennis competition for pro men’s tennis players today, what might it look like? Put another way: If you sought to make the Davis Cup “the World Cup of Tennis,” as it markets itself, what would the format be? What the tennis public thinks of as the Davis Cup is the so-called World Group— the sixteen best national teams, which always include the previous year’s Cup winner and runner-up, with the remaining teams chosen based on an ITF ranking system. Nations whose teams don’t make the World Group cut compete in ranked groups and regional zones of somewhat
Davis Cup
Winners, from 1946 to 1973
’46 U.S. ’47 U.S. ’48 U.S. ’49 U.S.
’50 Australia ’51 Australia ’52 Australia ’53 Australia ’54 U.S. ’55 Australia ’56 Australia ’57 Australia ’58 U.S. ’59 Australia ’60 Australia ’61 Australia ’62 Australia ’63 U.S. ’64 Australia ’65 Australia ’66 Australia ’67 Australia ’68 U.S. ’69 U.S. ’70 U.S. ’71 U.S. ’72 U.S. ’73 Australia
boggling complexity and, for the most part, in provincial obscurity. Revenue from the grouped, zoned play may help local tennis associations, but revenue—more revenue— can be found elsewhere: by creating an event that attracts a larger TV audience, for example. A sixteen-team competition makes sense. Let’s abandon the rest. Now, onto that 21st-century Davis Cup event. Not every year but every two years— the year following the Olympics, and then the year before the next Olympics—let’s bring together these sixteen top teams for
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