It is the great irony of tennis that although it is amongst the most dynamic of all major sports, its administration has often been the most conservative of all major sports. With the exception of rugby union, which cannot match tennis for its global reach and popularity, tennis was the last of the major sports to become fully professional. Now, as fans of Rugby Union enjoy another thrilling World Cup, tennis remains the one major sport not to have a genuine World Cup tournament. However, that might finally be about to change now that the most important activist and campaigner in the history of tennis, the great Billie Jean King, has joined the calls for a Tennis World Cup.
Tennis and America’s Relationship With World Cups
There is a further irony in BJK advocating for a Tennis World Cup, in that the women’s team tournament that was originally called the Federations Cup, or Fed Cup for short, now bears her name, in tribute to her monumental achievements both on and off the court. And of course the Billie Jean King Cup (and the Fed Cup before it) has long proclaimed itself “The World Cup of Tennis”, as indeed has the men’s competition, The Davis Cup.
Nevertheless, BJK, with her usually unfailing sense about what is best for tennis (the only exception was her call to reduce men’s matches at the Majors to three-set affairs) has called not only for the renaming of the BJK Cup but for its amalgamation with the Davis Cup to create a genuine Tennis World Cup. As was widely reported by the BBC and others, she said: “I think it’s really important to have a World Cup for tennis. The whole world understands a World Cup. They know it’s country versus country.”
Of course for so long Billie Jean King’s fellow countrymen and women didn’t fully understand the concept of a “World Cup”. That is because for most of the 20th century America’s major professional team sports (American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey) were really only played to a sufficiently high standard in North America. Therefore, it was thought, not unreasonably, that there was no need for them to have a World Cup, because whoever won the American or North American championship could legitimately claim to be the best in the world.
Now, however, even basketball and baseball have their World Cups (or equivalents) and because American Football continues to grow in popularity globally, it too will surely have its own World Cup at some point. Given the slowness with which tennis moves as a sport, it may even have one before tennis!
The Importance of BJK’s Call For Action
Nevertheless, if there is one person in tennis who can effect radical change of the kind required to create a World Cup, it is Billie Jean King. As John McEnroe for one never tires of saying, she is certainly the most important person in the history of tennis and arguably the most important person in the history of all of women’s sport.
That, of course, is because of the singular leadership that she provided half a century ago when she was so instrumental in the formation of the Women’s Tennis Association, or WTA, and with it the professional women’s tour. This year has seen numerous events to celebrate the half-centenary of that truly historic act. And although the creation of a Tennis World Cup could not be considered remotely as revolutionary as the effective creation of professional women’s tennis, it would still be a significant achievement by King.
Put simply, BJK has long proved that if she puts her mind to something, then, however difficult it is, it can be done. And given that she effectively led and won a civil war within professional tennis five decades ago, helping to create a Tennis World Cup now would be a cinch by comparison.
The All-Important Three Questions To Answer; First, When?
As BJK said herself, there are “a thousand questions” to answer before a Tennis World Cup could become a reality. That is probably true, but arguably there are three all-important questions to answer in the first place.
The first of those is when? Given tennis’s famously crowded season (it is so crowded that it is often said that tennis is the only professional sport with no off-season), when would it be possible to schedule a Tennis World Cup?
Well, the obvious answer is, “Once every four years”, just as with almost every other World Cup. The BJK/Fed Cup and the Davis Cup have always been annual tournaments, but if they were merged, as BJK has suggested, then it would be natural that a new Tennis World Cup would follow the model established by virtually every other World Cup and be held just once every four years. That would not only make it much easier to schedule (there would only be disruption to the regular season once every four years rather than every year); it would also give give it the rarity value that a World Cup really needs to establish itself and its importance.
More specifically, given that tennis is again an Olympic sport (after its exclusion from the Olympics between 1924 and 1988), it would also make sense that a Tennis World Cup would take place in the middle of Olympic cycles (again, as is consistent with many other sports). With the next Olympics in Paris in 2024, it would therefore be logical to stage the first Tennis World Cup in 2026 and every four years after that.
Finally, the ideal time for a tennis World Cup to take place within the tennis season itself is soon after the final Major of the year, the US Open, which always takes place in the last week of August and the first week of September. Ideally, a Tennis World Cup could be staged at the end of September or the start of October. And given that it is likely to last at least a month (like most other World Cups), that would effectively mean the end of the tennis season that year.
Of course a Tennis World Cup would mean disruption of the current calendar for the sport, but it would only be once every four years and as BJK has suggested, the benefits of a true Tennis World Cup would far outweigh the difficulties of having to reschedule the Paris Masters, the Asian swing or even the end-of-season finals one year out of every four. Big as those events and stretches of the calendar are, they pale into relative insignificance compared to the money, interest and sheer exposure that a Tennis World Cup would generate.
The Second All-Important Question – What Would Be The Format?
BJK herself has suggested what the answer to this question would be. As she said, “I want us together, I always want the men and women together. I think we can enhance it and make more of a focus on us.” So, the USP of a Tennis World Cup should be, as BJK suggests, a tournament in which men and women compete together to determine which is the greatest all-round tennis nation.
In an ideal world, the matches between nations would simply use the traditional five formats of tennis: men’s singles; women’s singles; men’s doubles; women’s doubles; and mixed doubles. However, given the overwhelming popularity of singles compared to doubles, it would surely make more sense to put more emphasis on the singles, with, say, two men’s singles matches, two women’s singles matches and one mixed-double match.
Although that would be hard on both men’s doubles and women’s doubles, it is probably the only feasible way in which to fit in five three-set matches between nations in a single day. And of course the very best doubles players from each nation – the best man and the best woman – would still have a place in the tournament, in the mixed doubles.
The Third All-Important Question – Where?
The third of the all-important questions is where a Tennis World Cup would take place. Fortunately, this is the easiest of those three questions to answer, because the first four Tennis World Cups should surely be held at the four Grand Slam venues: Melbourne Park; Roland Garros; Wimbledon; and Flushing Meadows in New York. They already have the infrastructure required to host a Tennis World Cup. Then, in time, the tournament could rotate to other venues, with the obvious first choice among those other venues being Indian Wells, which for so long has boasted of being “the Fifth Major”.
But Forget All The Problems And Think About The Benefits
Of course there are huge logistical and scheduling challenges to overcome, as BJK rightly identified. However, rather than focusing exclusively on the difficulties of staging a World Cup, tennis as a sport should follow the lead of BJK and start thinking about the benefits. And they could be incalculable.
First and foremost, a Tennis World Cup has the potential to be the second biggest World Cup of them all, second only to the World Cup, which of course is football’s quadrennial tournament, the original and still by far the best and biggest of all World Cups. As a sport, tennis, the greatest individual sport, is arguably second only to football, the greatest team sport, in having a truly global reach. And that is what ultimately makes a Tennis World Cup a no-brainer.
Because of the truly global exposure once every four years that only a team World Cup (even in an individual sport) can bring, tennis could potentially reap immeasurable other benefits. After the prize money for the competing teams is paid, the money generated by a Tennis World Cup could be ring-fenced to promote tennis globally, perhaps with a particular focus on Africa, the one continent where, Ons Jabeur’s heroics notwithstanding, the sport is really yet to penetrate. But the money generated by a Tennis World Cup, especially the first one, could be targeted at building more courts and providing more player pathway programmes in Africa and other parts of the developing world.
That’s All Fine-Tuning; Let’s Just Agree To Have a Tennis World Cup First
However, answering all those questions is really just fine-tuning. The first thing to do is for tennis as a sport – encompassing players, organising bodies (especially national federations), fans and media – to get behind BJK and really start agitating for a Tennis World Cup. The fact that there isn’t one already is, frankly, staggering. But with BJK’s unique brand of support behind it, there is finally the possibility that there will be one.
Main photo credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports
