By Charles Bricker
As if the Australian consortium proposing to redesign Davis Cup with a kind of bi-annual tennis World Cup needed any more ammunition, Davis Cup begins its 10-month odyssey this weekend without five of the world’s top 10 and eight of the top 20.
Most of the top players who won’t participate in the opening round are injured, but that’s a big part of the point the Aussies are making in wanting to chang the format of Davis Cup.
Instead of running four rounds throughout the year, leaving a lot of fans to wonder, “Hey, who did we beat three months ago in the last round?” they propose bringing 32 nations together in one 10-14 day festival after the regular season. If there is enough of a lapse between the ATP’s final tournament and tennis World Cup, it would give top players a chance to recover physically. It would also keep them from worrying about aggravating an injury in mid-season Davis Cup play that would inhibit them in upcoming ATP tournaments.
Here are the top-20 players not in this weekend’s Cup play, and why:
* No. 1 Roger Federer: Has a reported lung infection, but isn’t a Davis Cup fixture from year to year for Switzerland. He wasn’t planning to play this tie.
* No. 3 Rafael Nadal: Recovering from a knee injury, No doubt he would play for Spain if he was fit.
* No. 4 Andy Murray: Britain didn’t qualify for the 16-country World Group, so he couldn’t play if he wanted to. He played the last tie for Britain, a 3-2 semifinal loss last year to Poland in a qualifying round to reach the World Group.
* No. 5 Juan Martin Del Potro: Wrist injury. Little doubt he would play for Argentina if fit.
* No. 8 Andy Roddick: Told U.S. captain Patrick McEnroe weeks ago that he wouldn’t play the first round because it was on clay in Serbia and he didn’t feel good about an abrupt change of surface from hardcourt to clay, and then back to hardcourt again for Indian Wells and Key Biscayne.
* No. 12 Fernando Verdasco: Sciatic nerve flared up last week. He’s out, but he’s a committed player for Spain normally.
* No. 14 Juan Carlos Ferrero: Re-injured his knee Sunday and had to bow off Spain’s team. He was replaced by Nicolas Almagro.
* No. 18 Tommy Haas: Germany captain Patrick Kuhnen left Haas off the team because “he is poor form.”
How severe are these injuries? In some cases, probably serious enough to keep these men from playing. But a big problem with Davis Cup is the format of playing in the middle of the season. With two ATP 1000 events coming up (Indian Wells and Key Biscayne), no top player wants to miss the ranking points or big money. It’s not uncommon for players who might not be hurt too seriously to beg off Cup play so they can get ready for these two tournaments.
In the opening round, the U.S. is at Serbia (indoor clay), Switzerland at Spain (indoor clay), Germany at France (indoor hardcourt), India at Russia (indoor hardcourt), Ecuador at Croatia (indoor hardcourt), Argentina at Sweden (indoor hardcourt), Israel at Chile (outdoor clay), Czech Republic at Belgium (indoor clay).
Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com