By Charles Bricker
The outdated Davis Cup format, already under a strong attack by a consortium of Australian businessmen who want to turn it into a kind of World Cup, is now being assaulted from a second, much more influential source.
Butch Buchholz and Mike Davies, two former tennis pros with beaucoup credentials in the international marketing of the game, have been quietly working the last several months to transform the annual 11-month-long Davis Cup tournament into a two-week festival which they believe will streamline the event, make it significantly more attractive to television and, most importantly, bring the best players back into Cup play.
“I think I’ve got something the players would like in terms of a neater, tidier package of competition that would be less of a drain on the number of weeks they have to play. In addition, it’s my belief that the TV people will love it,” the Welsh-born Davies explained in a telephone interview from his home in Florida.
Ah, yes. The TV people and, by association, the sponsors. That’s the driving force in all sports and particularly in tennis and that’s where Buchholz and Davies appear to have an edge on the Aussies who are also trying to revamp Davis Cup.
Buchholz, himself a former U.S. Davis Cup player, took a small tournament called The Lipton in 1985 and turned it into the biggest non-Grand Slam event in tennis — the Sony Ericsson Open on Key Biscayne, Fl.
He did it with savvy marketing, by knowing how to attract and satisfy professional players and by his drive to take his tournament to the highest possible level short of a major. The Sony Ericsson Open is a combined men’s and women’s event which annually seems to hit record attendance, and it’s very possible that the concept being advanced by Buchholz and Davies will also be a combined event.
Davies said he doesn’t expect to nail down sponsors and budgeting until near the end of this year, but he’s already got a strong fix on the basics. Here are the key questions and answers:
* Will it still be called Davis Cup? Yes. Unlike the Aussie group, Buchholz and Davies want to continue Davis Cup competition and, in fact, are considering combining their two-week “festival of tennis” with the women’s Fed Cup.
* When would the festival be held? Possibly April, right after Key Biscayne. This, of course, would require the ATP (and the WTA if Fed Cup is included) to revamp their schedules. Currently, Davis Cup takes four weeks out of the ATP schedule — in February, July, September and December. The Buchholz-Davies concept saves two weeks at a time when ATP pros have become increasingly angry about the length of the season.
* How many nations are in the two-week competition? Possibly as many as 13 with 12 survivors of knock-out ties that take place the previous year, plus the host country, which gets an automatic berth.
* Where will it be played? Indoors or outdoors and in a different venue each year.
* What are the economics? With, presumably, all the major tennis nations in the festival, you’ve got the potential for any number of TV contracts — not just one or two — and most of the top players in the game at the same event.
* How does the ITF, which runs the Davis Cup, feel about having its current 11-month-long Davis Cup competition tinkered with? They can’t feel good about it. The ITF is resistant to almost any change, no matter how logical. Even now, with No. 1 Rafa Nadal not playing Davis Cup because of injury fears and No. 3 Roger Federer once again disdaining Davis Cup to concentrate on the ATP tour, the ITF just doesn’t see the need to change its format.
“At one time, Davis Cup was bigger than the Slams,” said Buchholz. “But things have changed. Today, it’s a hard sell because it’s lost a lot of world wide appeal from a media point of view. The top players are not playing.”
When the Aussie group announced earlier this year it was planning to try to replace Davis Cup with a Grand Slam of Nations, it got immediate endorsement from Nadal and Federer. Even without hard details, top players were for it because they’re in favor of anything that junks the current Davis Cup format.
Davies said he wants to work with the ITF, not against them as the Aussies are. But he’s not presenting any final plans until he has a firm budget and sponsors lined up.
One of the most appealing features of the Buchholz-Davies plan is that it takes this interminably long Davis Cup competition (four rounds in 11 months) and potboils it down to two weeks. You don’t have to scratch your head trying to remember who your country beat in the quarterfinal round three months ago because it has been so long since the previous tie that your memory has blanked out.
It’s like a shortened version of the Olympics.
“I know the business side of the ITF because I worked there,” said Davies. “I realize that just coming up with an idea is all well and good, but who has the plan to put together the competition, with over 130 countries competing?”
There’s little doubt that the players are going to climb on board the Buchholz-Davies plan. Most of them want to represent their countries, but Davis Cup as it’s presently formatted, just doesn’t work for players’ schedules.
No less a committed Davis Cupper than Andy Roddick this year declared that he can no longer play because the potential surface changes for a weekend and the interruption of his ATP tour plans inhibit his overall performance.
Knowing these two men as I do, I have no doubt that Buchholz and Davies are going to put together a final package and probably get some significant TV and sponsor commitments to their reform of Davis Cup. But I also know the ITF well enough to know that when the package is presented to them, they’ll want to reject it just out of belligerence.
The key to making this Davis Cup format change lies with the top players. Once Buchholz and Davies have a completed, detailed plan, they have to first take it to the ATP Players Council. When you’ve got almost every top 20 player saying, “We want this,” it’s going to make it very difficult for the ITF to continue it’s long-standing posture of lodging its feet in cement.
“Obviously, someone thinks they’re going to get hurt with something like what we’re proposing,” said Davies. “The major problem is that eight or nine countries may not have any home Davis Cup matches. But I think you have to look at what’s good for the overall competition.”
Charles Bricker can be reached at nflwriterr@aol.com