This week's Davis Cup final between France and Croatia in the French city of Lille will mark the end of another too-lengthy tennis season but, more poignantly, it also will mark the end of an era for the men's team event that began in Boston in 1900.
The first ever final, played in trousers and whites at the original site of the Longwood Cricket Club, matched the United States against Britain over three days, with a best-of-five-sets format.
Memories: Lleyton Hewitt was a key figure in Australia's rich Davis Cup history.Credit:AP
The Americans, whose team included the competition's founder, Dwight Davis, swept the visitors, who had crossed the Atlantic by ship without their two best players: the Doherty brothers, Reginald and Laurie.
Advertisement
The Dohertys eventually were persuaded to make the same journey, winning the Cup for Britain at Longwood in 1903. But 115 years later, it is the flickering interest of tennis's present-day superstars that has led to radical change.
If Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic had all made the Davis Cup a priority at the same time, they might have lifted the event into a new golden era, just as they have elevated their sport as a whole.
But it was not to be. Individual ambition, injuries and the demands of an overstuffed tennis calendar conspired against it. Federer and Nadal have played 38 times but never in Davis Cup competition.
Djokovic has played Nadal and Federer only once each in the Cup, both matches coming before he entered his prime.
Beginning next year, the Davis Cup will abandon its traditional two-team final for an 18-team final phase in November in Madrid; in the new format, the stakes will be reduced from four singles matches to two, along with one doubles match, all contested over best-of-three-sets.
Critics have taken to calling it the Kosmos Cup or Piqué Cup: references to the investment group headed by Gerard Piqué, Spain's polymathic football star, that is largely bankrolling the revamped competition and intending to make a profit.
Officially, however, the competition will remain the Davis Cup, at least in the short-term, with the champions still getting their mitts on one of the oldest and grandest trophies in global sports.
The Davis Cup helped shape Djokovic's career.Credit:AP
"I honestly don't see it as the end of an era as much as I see it as the end of a chapter of a long book," said David Haggerty, the president of the International Tennis Federation, which controls the Cup.
Haggerty, an American and the primary architect of the Cup changes, most likely will find the public disagrees when he takes his seat on Friday in Lille.
The French captain, Yannick Noah, and his players were among the most vocal opponents of the new format, even though their federation voted in favour.
"The Davis Cup is dead, and part of the history of our sport is gone for a handful of dollars," Nicolas Mahut, the French doubles stalwart, wrote on Twitter after the ITF surprisingly voted for the proposed changes in August.
But even if one embraces Haggerty's metaphor, the concern has to be that the Davis Cup book could eventually go out of print.
The men's Tour has pushed ahead with its decision to relaunch its own team event, the ATP Cup, in January 2020 in Australia with a 10-day format that is far too similar — with 24 teams and best-of-three-set matches.
The prizemoney is set to be similar, too: $US15 million ($A20.6 million) for the ATP Cup and $18 million for the new Davis Cup.
The big difference: The ATP players and their council fully back their new event, which, unlike the revised Davis Cup, will provide the extra incentive of ranking points.
The fact that both events are going to be staged less than two months apart is tennis at its most dysfunctional.
Redesigning the Davis Cup and doing away with a home-and-away final phase and tradition only makes sense if there is a guarantee that most of the best players are going to play. The ATP Cup makes such assurances impossible, even if ATP officials have repeatedly stated that their event was "never meant to replace or rival Davis Cup".
But there has been some buyers' remorse — or is it sellers'? — and there have been two recent rounds of meetings among the ATP, the ITF and representatives of the four grand slam tournaments.
The idea — obvious but still overdue — is to work more closely together for the good of the sport, and toward a more harmonious calendar.
Djokovic, back at No.1 and a very proactive head of the ATP player council, was part of the most recent meeting, held last week during the ATP Finals in London.
Davis Cup tennis helped make Djokovic: His performance in 2010 as Serbia won the Cup for the first time cemented his status as a national hero and helped propel him to dominance on the regular Tour in 2011.
Now, with his influence spiking again, he can help make or break it. Djokovic has said it would be better to have a single men's team event, which is undoubtedly true. But with Kosmos and its millions in the mix, tennis' alphabet soup of power players now has another letter.
Compromise will be even trickier, but the hope is for a rethink and a more sustainable model by 2021 — after the Davis Cup final spends two years in Madrid and the ATP Cup launches in Australia.
Muddy waters? Absolutely. But what is clear is that the Davis Cup as generations have long known it will soon be gone: three days of best-of-five-set tennis with the spotlight on two nations and a large unabashedly home crowd, like the one expected this weekend in Lille.
It has been quite a tale, full of plot twists, upsets and indelible characters like Bill Tilden, Ken Rosewall, John McEnroe and Noah, to name just a very few.
That might be worth definitively turning the page for if you know your odds of getting something more lucrative and, most importantly, more relevant are good. But as tennis's cups runneth over and into each other, that is hardly how the odds look at the moment.
New York Times
[contf] [contfnew] 
Australian Breaking News Headlines
[contfnewc] [contfnewc]
