On Wednesday afternoon, Stan Wawrinka, an older tennis player (38 years old, three Grand Slam titles), lost to the Frenchman Ugo Humbert in their Davis Cup duel (double 6-4) and then took a look at the stands at the AO Arena in Manchester.
Disillusioned, he grabbed his cell phone, photographed everything he saw and posted it on social media.
There was not a soul in the stands. If anything, timid little groups of Swiss, a warm red among the dark blue.
Then, Wawrinka turned to Gerard Piqué.
Wrote:
“Thank you, Gerard Piqué. France vs. Switzerland in Manchester lol”.
(Thank you, Gerard Piqué. France-Switzerland in Manchester. LOL)
Piqué immediately answered him. He did it by resorting to the 2022 capacity, when his company, Kosmos Tennis, was still in charge of the tournament, profoundly reformed in 2019. Piqué said:
“This was the number of attendees at the Group Stage last year: 113,268. You can compare it for yourself. We no longer organize the tournament. Ask the ITF…”
Wawrinka continued on. He said that Piqué’s message had made him laugh even after his defeat.
“It would be good if you could explain to us better why, if the tournament was so successful last year, you have broken a 25-year commitment after five years.”
Piqué had the last word:
“We don’t know yet…the judge will decide. Good luck for the rest of the week.”
The matter had more consequences. Mardy Fish, who had been a rising star of American tennis in the past decade, and also captain of the United States, joined the charge against Piqué:
“They have killed Davis.”
Y Julien Benneteau, ex French tenista:
“How dare you say anything? You have literally killed one of the pillars of ITF Tennis. Please at least shut the fuck up.”
And, it is true, Davis is in a quagmire: no one has found the magic formula to redirect it and now it has plunged into a dark alley, weighed down by the little interest it arouses in the popular imagination and the little interest it arouses among the first. swords.
In reality, the tournament has been going off the rails for a long time: it has been like this since the years before the reform of Kosmos Tennis, before 2019.
Scattered throughout the calendar, alien to the individual interests of the world’s first swordsmen, the Davis had become obsolete, vintage. The previous rounds did not raise the interest of the crowd, Spain traveled to Belarus and Italy, to Romania, and all those crosses were played almost in secret, in a stressed calendar that disenchanted the great figures, all of them more attentive to their commitments with the ATP circuit. With their dreams of taking over the tournament fulfilled, figures like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal turned their backs on the qualifiers, an issue that tormented the ITF organizers.
In the midst of the Davis crisis, Kosmos emerged. The project? A sort of World Cup of tennis, all condensed into one week and in a single venue. A groundbreaking project that aspired to bring together the great swords in an identical setting.
Piqué’s Davis let herself be called.
Its conception was inopportune. By then, Roger Federer was lifting a similar product, the Laver Cup, and that coincidence in time opened wounds. Piqué promised a cataract of dollars (3,000 million over 25 years), but the offer aroused the suspicion of tennis purists. Some accused him of being an intruder. Federer himself turned his back on him.
Despite the reluctance of Davis, the reform went ahead and the new format was born in November 2019, at the Caja Mágica in Madrid. Led by a committed Rafael Nadal, Spain took the first title of the new era, but the organization received little applause. The calendar was poorly designed. The sessions ended at dawn, to the despair of tennis players and fans.
The fiasco proposed the first redesign, a simultaneous Davis in three venues, not one.
The redesign was a long time coming: the world stopped in 2020, punished by the pandemic. 2021 opened to this new three-way format, but the tournament never took off, nor did it in 2022. It was played during the week, and only two Top-10 committed to participate. Felix Auger-Aliassime (6th in the world then) and Taylor Fritz (9th) did it.
Kosmos Tennis did not see a way out of the business and proposed a downward revision. The ITF rejected the proposal, so it regained control of Davis. Just over four years had passed since Kosmos’ commitment. Weighed down by the drift of the tournament, the ITF multiplied the number of venues for 2023. The Group Stage held this week takes place in four cities: Bologna, Split, Manchester and Valencia. Spain plays in Valencia. The first two in each group will advance to the final, which will be held in Malaga at the end of November.
The current program offers disenchanted scenes. Netherlands and Finland face each other in Split. Sweden and Chile, in Bologna.
