by Pete Bodo
As much as I love Davis Cup, the events of this weekend once again confirmed two related things: how much the game has changed in just a few decades, and the degree to which the official records of the game are unreliable.
The game has spread faster than a prairie fire in the past few decades. No nation other than the USA, Great Britain, France or Australia won the Davis Cup between 1900 and 1974. That's three-quarters of a century. And the next nation to break through was still strongly Anglo-European South Africa (although they won by walkover, when India refused to play because of South Africa's official embrace of apartheid).
Since '74 though, eight new nations have been added to the honor roll. All that is, to some degree, the result of the dramatic shift to "Open" tennis, which arrived in 1968 and abolished the historic separation of players into amateurs and professionals (for most of tennis's history, the latter were barred from competing with amateurs at the most important tournaments, including the Grand Slam events).
It also didn't hurt that the Open era made it possible to become rich playing tennis, which created all kinds of interest in the game and not always for the wrong reasons. It also gave us the birth of the cradle-to-grave professional, starting with Bjorn Borg. One of the most futile and frustrating exercises for the tennis (amateur) historian is to compare amateur and Open era players, and the job gets even more dodgy when you're dealing with great players like Pancho Gonzalez, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall and others whose careers spanned the transition.
The history of the game is a ball-and-chain in another way. Spain, which won its fifth title since the year 2000 yesterday, just erased any doubt that it is officially a Davis Cup dynasty. Yet Rafael Nadal probably would have to play until he's 85, or ready to pass the racquet to his offspring, for Spain to even challenge for pre-eminence. The U.S. has won the Davis Cup a most unhelpful and now almost surreal-seeming 32 times. We weren't the only glory hogs, either. Australia has 28 wins.
The changes in the demographics of tennis have turned what might otherwise be one of the great international sports rivalries into a spectacle we might call Rivalry Interrupted. I'd say the lead enjoyed by the two most successful nations is safe, for now. And the next decade. And the next century. Who even knows if these two suddenly slacker nations will ever meet again on the field of play? The overall success rates of the nations are not a great statistic to cite when you're trying to whip folks all over the world into a harmless nationalistic frenzy based on the bragging rights to the Davis Cup competition.
And here's something else to consider: Until 1972, when the present-day World Group format was adopted, the ITF used the "Challenge Round" approach. That is, the winner each year sat out the competition until the other nations of the world played at intervals over must of the next year for the right to "challenge" the holder in a final.
I'd bet that Rafael Nadal is wishing the Challenge Round would still be in use. And what with so many top players pissing and moaning about the high degree of commitment demanded by Davis Cup I'm not sure going back to that format would be such a bad if undoable idea — either in Davis Cup or at the major tournaments where it also was once popular. In tennis, we demand that the putative "heavyweight champ" fight all the contenders — and a lot of the tomato cans. Tell you what, though, in all sincerity: I'd rather go back to the Challenge Round than adopt one of those hideous plans to centralize the competition and eliminate the choice-of-ground approach.
It may be overly generous to France and Great Britain, but if you take the U.S. and Australia out of the equation, you'd have a pretty neat, ongoing battle for Davis Cup supremacy. France and Great Britain would still lead with nine titles, but Sweden (7) and now Spain would be right up there nipping at their heels.
But here's a better idea, and one which wouldn't punish the U.S. or Australia for their undeniable if often-resented former greatness: the ITF ought to make a significant effort to draw a bold, thick line between the Challenge Round and World Group eras. It has not done so to this point, and while that lessens the complications, it doesn't help the game appear of-the-moment, representative, or credible. If we're so happy and eager to separate the amateur and Open eras, why not do the same for Davis Cup, now that we have enough World Group history to call on?
That would make 1972 the first year of the professional era. Now you would have the U.S. with 8 titles, Sweden still with 7, Australia with 6, Spain with 5, France and Germany with 3, and one apiece for Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy, South Africa and Serbia — and Great Britain with zero. That seems to me a very accurate reflection of tennis geopolitics and something very much like an accurate power ranking of tennis nations.
There's no reason to ignore or disavow history. But it should be used properly.