Do ITF's New Proposals Mean The End Of Davis Cup? - UBITENNIS
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Do ITF’s New Proposals Mean The End Of Davis Cup?

By Tony Fairbairn
5 Min Read
David Haggerty (zimbio.com)

The ITF have today announced new proposals that could signal the end of the traditional Davis Cup and be replaced with ‘The World Cup Of Tennis.’

The ITF’s new proposal includes a 25 year and 3 billon dollar partnership with investment group Kosmos, who was founder by Barcelona and Spanish footballer Gerard Pique. The idea is to ‘generate substantial revenues for global tennis development.’ So with that economic announcement, they have now endorsed a new idea called the ‘World Cup of Tennis’, which would replace the traditional World Group.

The idea of this new format is that there would be 18 teams playing in one location over a period of seven days. There will be a round-robin format, with a knockout tournament starting from the Quarter-Finals determining who would be the new Davis Cup champions. Also each tie would consist of two singles matches and one doubles, with all matches being best out of three sets.

The 16 teams who are currently in the World Group would automatically qualify with a further two teams being chosen from Zone Group I. The eight Play-Off winners will earn a place in the following year’s competition. Zone Group I and Zone Group II will stick with its original format in the corresponding dates that have been set this year. The proposal is due to start in 2019 with it taking place subject to an AGM meeting in Florida in August. The proposal needs a two-thirds majority to take place.

Here is what ITF President David Haggerty had to say about the move, “Our vision is to create a major season-ending finale that will be a festival of tennis and entertainment, featuring the world’s greatest players representing their nations to decide Davis Cup champions.”

Gerard Pique, the founder of Kosmos, also had this to say, “Kosmos is thrilled to join in this exciting partnership with the ITF. Together we can elevate Davis Cup by BNP Paribas to new heights by putting on a must-see World Cup of Tennis Finals featuring the top nations and top players. Kosmos will also invest $3 billion over 25 years into tennis that will help develop the game worldwide.”

Analysis and Reaction

The move is economically great for the ITF as they have now a massive sum of money to spend on future generations for tennis and spend to ensure World tennis is here to stay. However in terms of the Davis Cup, it is a bad move as it gets rid of the atmosphere of the Davis Cup that everybody loved and is used to. It also makes the tournament less accessible for fans as they cannot see the world’s best competition in their local country for cheap ticket prices.

It is clear that if the proposal goes ahead, then there will be anger from a variety of people as they have destroyed the Davis Cup and the feel good factor that the competition brought from all sides of the globe. It is also clear that the idea has stemmed from the Rich who just want to get richer, which is clear to see through the ITF president, David Haggerty and Gerard Pique. So they now have big pressure to convince the big players to play the tournament otherwise this reform may have been considered an epic failure.

As expected the reaction hasn’t been good, here are some of the best reactions from the tennis globe:

https://twitter.com/TenniceFan/status/968147831771951105

The next step is now to see if the changes will be approved at the AGM meeting in Orlando, Florida in August. 

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