Zverev fires Davis formula: 'Money can't buy history'

The current format, in its last year of life, has never appealed to players. Alex: “Davis has always been the competition with the best atmosphere, so it doesn’t work.” Mahmut: “They failed, we all saw it”

That the new Davis Cup format signed by Gerard Piquè did not enjoy unanimous affection has been known for some time, so much so that it will be the last year of the agreement between Kosmos and ITF, with the latter having decided to go further after four years. How, still, we don’t know. Now the players have come out, openly criticizing the way to run one of the oldest team events in the world, with a century-old tradition. Not that they hadn’t done it before, but Alexander Zverev, in the field for the qualifying playoffs with his Germany (against Switzerland), wanted to clarify the concept better.

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The German, former world number two, said that “money can’t buy history”. Zverev continued: “Sport thrives on emotion and the Davis Cup has always been the competition with the best atmosphere. We have all seen that the new format is not working. I think this competition needs to generate emotion through home and away matches.” away match – said the German -. Personally, then, I’m a fan of best-of-five-set matches”. For the future, Zverev said that “the ITF should involve players to make decisions.” Even Nicolas Mahut, who also won a Davis Cup with France in 2017, didn’t go lightly: “They wanted to hold a tennis world championship, they failed, we’ve all seen it – he said – The public didn’t answered, there was no interest. In France it didn’t even go on public television, the demand was so small”.