1-Man’s Opinion on Sports-Thursday “Tennis-The Game Trying to Catch Up”
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“Tennis-Catching Up with the Globe”
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An interesting day ahead for those who follow tennis.
The dateline is Orlando, Florida, where the International Tennis Federation is about to vote on radical changes in a sports event that no longer relevant.
We have seen how special a global event ,the Olympics have become.
We’ve just concluded a fascinating 3-week run in the World Cup of Soccer.
We know the specialness of Wimbledon, the British Open in Golf, and the Masters.
And now, a decade after I said they should do it, tennis is going to change the Davis Cup tourney.
It’s 118-years old, but this is a different world we live in.
Television has made events ‘big’.
The Davis Cup is like a dinosaur now. Qualifying in different parts of the year for different parts of the globe. Country-vs-Country matches in qualifying that no one pays attention to.
Events thrown into open windows so as not to compete with events on the world pro tennis calendar.
The Davis Cup has lost its buzz, and probably lost its talent level too. No more Martina’s, Chrissie Evert’s, Stefi Graff or Billy Jean King..
No more Borg-Lendl, McEnroe, Connors-Nastase and so many others.
Now a decision to be voted on, to make the Davis Cup a 2-week tourney, in December. with big money prize money and 18-countries in competition at the same time.
It will become a big TV event too, in a period of time, December, when there are no events clogging up the calendar.
Granted we don’t have the dominant individual players aside from Serena, Federer, Nadal or Djokovic.
But what we do have are a list of great international players, who would gather under one umbrella, to play for their flags.
1-location, 1-slot on the calendar, with all the global stars gathered together.
Think Olympics, World Cup, Wimbledon and more.
It took them a long time to catch up, but a Davis Cup in December, everybody playing at the same time in the same location, sounds like an ‘ace’ of an idea to me.
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