indiana wrote:

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About time there were some close sets

Seriously, it's been very good in that respect. I am a bit sceptical when essentially exhibitions like Europe vs the Rest of the World have very close matches. But these finals have been proper close competitive tennis.

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 Indeed. Of course , the atp have cleverly got not only the rival atp cup with more money and ranking points , but also endorse the laver cup as part of the atp tour, and hence have the september dates in their control. So in negotiations with the ITF, the ATP and Tennis Australia can certainly negotiate from a strong starting point. 

Major hats off to Bautista Agut, after what he has been through and, I hadn't realised also getting married in a week.

Well done to him and much sympathy also.

JonH comes home wrote:

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Major hats off to Bautista Agut, after what he has been through and, I hadn't realised also getting married in a week.

Well done to him and much sympathy also.

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Couldn't agree more.  The crowd are rightly paying homage to him today.

https://twitter.com/abelrinconv/status/1198664680396460032

For those who don't remember, Abel Rincon, who posted this, was Alex Ward's coach when he was training in Barcelona.

Bob in Spain wrote:

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indiana wrote:

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Early on in Leon's DC tenure Jamie Baker, having come back from across the Atlantic, purely for DC, was dropped late on for Dan, initially seemingly only there as hitting back back-up. "Tough" on Jamie said some. And it worked but that was almost not the main point. Leon had observed and made a call.

Re Kyle, isn't he teaming up with Del Potro's ex-coach, Franco Davin? And if so, will Beechy still be involved? 

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The first comment there would relate to Coventry against the Russians.  I was lucky enough to be there as well that weekend and remember only too well discussions over Jamie Baker's exclusion.

As for Kyle, I don't have any "scoops" on that, I'm afraid.  The fans and players were kept well apart.  I know that Davin was going to have a week's trial with Kyle, but I have no idea how that went.  But on the ATP site, Beechy is currently listed as Kyle's coach and has been with him since Kyle and Hilts parted ways.

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HI, I was in Coventry as well, though just for the doubles, great match, Jonny Marray and Colin Fleming I think, destroyed the Russian doubles pair.

Jamie Baker, I've been trying to think of his name all week, is commentating on Eurosport. did a good job too. always nice to have a players perspective. 

And Spain take the cup. Good week, fix the issues and next year will be fab

I doubt I'll be half as invested in the ATP Cup come January. I was kind of half hoping that Andy would have chosen the Middle East 500 event so that GB wouldn't even be included and thus (my) interest would be even lower, but a combo of 3am starts, just 6 weeks after the DC (which I was fully invested in), WTA events running alongside it, and a bit of a flawed system whereby a virtually unknown Moldovan player can compete for 'bonus' points, whereas someone like Rublev can't even enter, makes me think I'll skip it.

Having earlier put up my thoughts on last night's GB/Spain tie, I thought I would now express my opinions on the tournament as a whole, having been fortunate enough to experience it first hand.

Was it a success and will it continue to be ? For me that depends on perspective.

From the point of view of TV audiences and people following the tournament from home, I think this has to go down as a success. Bringing so many players under one roof in a team environment and condensing it into one week captures the imagination of the public and builds excitement in the lead up to the final. It as a format that many will understand - Round Robin follow by QF/SF/Final. It has the ability to attract a new audience whereas having the previous format of Davis Cup was basically for tennis nerds such as ourselves. One area where I do think it missed a trick is that it should have gone out on terrestrial TV for a few years as it captures that new audience, and then it could have been sold to "pay" TV. It has the capacity to be the "Ryder Cup" of tennis. I wonder how many people watch the Ryder Cup who would otherwise never watch golf ?

From a management and organisational point of view, there were clearly issues and lessons to be learned. Some of these were more apparent than others. I accept that it is a new tournament and to that extent, there were always going to be teething problems, but there were some glaring omissions. As an example, around the outside of the Centre Court is a large covered concourse where all those waiting to go in can wait, eat, shop etc. For the Master's Series events, there are plenty of big screens showing the action and keeping people up to date with the scores. This week there were none at all. Those waiting to go in had to follow live scores on their phones to see how long they would have to wait before their match was due to begin.

However, the biggest issue, was of course the scheduling. The late finishes are no good for man nor beast and a solution must be found. The only solution I can see if to split the RR matches across different venues so that no court has more than one tie per day. I saw one tie of "best of three" matches (I am a convert to that by the way) and that was 6 hours of tennis, which is plenty for anyone. Let's not forget that all three matches were won/lost in straight sets as well. But spreading the tournament across more venues may distract from the "festival" feeling of the event. The only other solution I can see to shorten matches is for the doubles to revert to ATP rules of No Ad scoring and MTBs instead of 3rd sets. For me this would be wrong and would very much devalue the importance of the doubles as a "deciding" match. I would hate to see this happen as it could turn these matches into nothing more than a "penalty shootout".

Finally from an onsite spectator perspective, this is where I still have my biggest concern. The fact that the LTA were forced to hand out more than 1000 free tickets to ensure the presence of fans is a symptom of the structure of the tournament. People will not buy tickets in advance because they don't know if their team will advance. There was also substantial unrest from some of the supporters that had been there all week. After the Germany victory, a number of them headed to the box office to pay their 75 euros per person for SF tickets, only to find out 2 hours later that the LTA were handing them out for free.

The match I saw was a DC tie in the true traditional sense. It was a classic home/away tie with a partisan crowd, worthy of the best traditions of the Davis Cup but very atypical within the new format. But when I "sneaked peaked" through the doors at the crowd for the Russia/Canada match, from the section of the court that I could see, there were far more empty seats than filled ones. That was the deciding rubber of a DC SF being played in a sparsely occupied arena.

The true success of this format for the onsite spectator perspective will only be known once we have a year where Spain are knocked out in the RR stage and we have teams from far flung countries facing each other in the knockout stages. I fear the worst in this scenario unless a solution is found.

Overall though, it was an interesting experiment and it is a format worth persevering with in the short term, but I reserve judgement on whether it will be a complete success and worthy of being called the Davis Cup.