It is December 17, 1988, when a piece of German sports history is written. It is the day on which Germany wins the Davis Cup for the first time, it is nothing less than a miracle. And so this pre-Christmas weekend in Gothenburg also remains in collective memory as the “Miracle of Gothenburg”, the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the crazy triumph of the German tennis team in Sweden.
It’s almost 30 years ago now and the memory of it is split these days. There is the memory of the great, emotional, touching moments in the “Scandinavium”, of how a certain Carl-Uwe Steeb, with his sensational victory over the then world’s best player Mats Wilander, laid the foundation for the cup win, how four conspiratorial German tennis friends around the discreet leader Boris Becker created this Davis Cup Hallelujah.
But of course there is also sadness and melancholy about times that will never come back. We can’t come back. Not because Germany would never again be able to win this oldest team competition in the world. It’s because this Davis Cup no longer exists.
The Davis Cup, as generations of players and fans knew it, was buried on Sunday afternoon. With the last rally in the final 2018, with the Croatian victory against France – in the “Stade Pierre-Mauroy” in Lille, in front of another 20.000 spectators. “If these people call it the Davis Cup next year, it’s nothing but a lie,” said Yannick Noah, the charismatic French captain, “don’t be fooled: The competition is dead.”
Noah had also brought this charge to the attention of the man who is commonly regarded as the gravedigger of the Davis Cup – World Federation President David Haggerty. “I don’t belong to your world,” the last French Roland Garros champion told the American in the face at the official ceremonies after the match.
What he meant was: the sale of the soul of the Davis Cup, the sale to an opaque consortium called Kosmos, behind which a Japanese billionaire and the Spanish football professional Gerard Pique are behind.
What they thought of Haggerty and the international officials who followed the call of money, the French fans made this weekend more than clear: Whenever the ITF chief was shown on video screens, a screaming whistle concert sounded.
The Davis Cup 2019, which the ITF and Kosmos want to organise, is threatening to become a disaster. At least when it comes to the claim that the best and strongest in the industry serve when it comes to winning the trophy. The new 18-team final tournament is due to take place at the end of November 2019, behind the London ATP finals, and over a week with a tight schedule.
It would practically mean the end of any meaningful recovery time for the professionals, and therefore many celebrities have waved long ago. Alexander Zverev, the ATP World Champion from Germany, leads the way. But you won’t see Federer, Djokovic or Murray there either, not to mention the rebellious French who already made it clear to the ITF bosses that this competition was done for them before it even started.
World Cup of Tennis – this is the new subtitle that the world federation has given its creature. It’s like it’s a tennis match to the World Cup. But in Madrid in a year’s time a B-World Cup is likely to take place with the exhausted and maladjusted – with players chasing after the money again at the end of an exhausting season and ruining their health in the process.
But many stars and starlets will not come at all, even rumours about a boycott call are going through the scene. Finally, the professional players have an alternative in mind, presented by their own trade union, the ATP. It has just launched the ATP Cup in the undeclared war of dates and tournaments, a team world championship at the beginning of the season in Australia, as a countdown competition to the Australian Open. Unlike the “new Davis Cup”, which is also mocked as the “Kosmos Cup” or “Pique-Cup”, the ATP even scores world ranking points.
The whole scramble, it is also symptomatic of the eternal fragmentation and dissension in world tennis – with its many opposing centres of power. And different interests. Haggerty, the man from the world federation, now wants an “agreement on a common date” for a team competition, but he negotiates from a position of weakness. He has the worst of all appointments, his adversaries one of the best of all appointments.
Even the “Laver Cup” show competition, orchestrated with the help of Maestro Roger Federer in September, is far better than Haggerty and his cronies. France’s Davis Cup double star Nicolas Mahut put this on record this weekend: “I hope this new competition will quickly fail. And that there will be the Davis Cup as we all know it. The good Davis Cup.”