From Wimbledon, Vanni Gibertini
It could be one of those decisions that mark the beginning of a new era. Or just one of those that force the greater good on two (or more) parties reluctant to talk to each other. The announcement by the ATP of a new team competition that will take place in Australia at the beginning of January starting in 2020 is an open-hand slap in the face of the ITF and its efforts to revamp its ailing Davis Cup into a one-week single-venue competition.
Very few details have been released about the exact format of the new competition but the feeling is that players already have a very clear idea of what it will look like. “It is a good format, something that players will enjoy – said Milos Raonic – and it is a format that is put in a part of the year where players are going to be very eager to play”.
There was little indication in the official press release from the ATP whether that would be a one-week or a two-week competition, but Nadal’s comments after his first-round win at Wimbledon seem to suggest that only the first week of the year will be occupied by the new World Team Cup: “From a calendar perspective, nothing changes, and that is good” said the Roland Garros champion to the Spanish press.
It’s not far-fetched to assume that the ATP and Tennis Australia have not released many details in order not to provide the ITF with guidelines on how to tailor the new Davis Cup (or World Cup of Tennis) to better respond to this newly created competition. In fact, the vote on this Davis Cup reform is only six weeks away, as it will take place in Orlando on 13-16 August during the ITF Annual General Meeting. It is believed that the final version of the document to be voted has to be finalized at least a month before the meeting, in order to give enough time to the ITF member nations to study it and decide how to vote. As it stands, the competition is due to start during the fourth week of November 2019, a mere seven weeks before the date pencilled in for the ATP’s World Team Cup.
But if competition in the market is normally good for consumer, in this case tennis fans may be served with an internal battle among the organizing bodies of the sport that could lead tennis back to the days of Grand Prix and WCT, when competing circuits and foggy rankings were making it harder than ever to establish who was the best. “We need to think about what is good for tennis as a sport, regardless of the internal political battles – said Roger Federer after his first-round win at Wimbledon on Monday – take the [Soccer] World Cup, for example: it takes over the world, with the exception of Wimbledon because this tournament has built such an amazing reputation throughout the years. Our ambition should be to create something similar for tennis. Now I’m also intrigued to find out how good all these events are going to be, what Davis Cup is going to do”.
What seems to be clear is that the world seems to have a big appetite for a team competition in tennis where nations play each other for a big prize. The ITF has found the Kosmos investment fund willing to invest $3 billion over 25 years to finance the “new Davis Cup”; Tennis Australia must have also found some munificent sponsor to fund the $15 million prize money promised for the World Team Cup, since sources close to the ATP confirm that the men’s tour governing body will not be facing any out-of-pocket expenses for this new event.
The ideal solution would be a coordinated effort to create the best and most profitable show that our sport can produce. However, what we see now is a dogfight over who is going to keep the profits for themselves, even if this means creating a fracture in the tennis world. Let’s hope greed succumbs to reason before any irreparable damage is done.
