The Davis Cup loves to describe itself as \u201cThe World Cup of Tennis\u201d. Indeed, it has copyrighted that very phrase and proudly proclaims it from its website, especially in the wake of Spain\u2019s first victory in the new, week-long format that has just finished in Madrid. However, using its own business logic, the Davis Cup should be sued under the trade descriptions act, because it is not a \u201cWorld Cup of Tennis\u201d and never will be, prompting the question: why can\u2019t tennis, like most other major sports, have a REAL World Cup?<\/p>\n
The two basic tenets of any \u201cWorld Cup\u201d in any sport, starting with football (which held the first \u201cWorld Cup\u201d of any major sport in Uruguay in 1930), is that it should be a relative rarity, an event that takes place once only every few years (four has long been established as the ideal gap between tournaments), and that it is the absolute career highlight\/ crowning achievement of that sport, at least as it is played at national level.<\/p>\n
Judged against both those fundamental criteria \u2013 relative rarity and singular importance \u2013 the Davis Cup has never been a real \u201cWorld Cup\u201d of tennis. First of all, it is played for annually, and so players have always known that if they missed out or chose not to play one year, they would have another chance the following year. Secondly, the very reason that the new, week-long format was adopted in the first place was precisely because the greatest players in the world were not entering the Davis Cup in its old format and instead focusing on their own individual careers. Although is true that two of \u201cThe Big Three\u201d (Nadal and Djokovic) did compete in Madrid, the other member of the triumvirate, Roger Federer, who for the time being at least is still statistically the greatest male tennis player ever, chose not to play, and his lead was followed by a considerable number of other top players, notably Germany\u2019s Sacha Zverev, who chose to accompany Federer on his Latin American exhibition tour rather than play in Spain<\/a>.<\/p>\n