Laver Cup

Davis Cup, BJK Cup, ATP Cup, Olympics and Laver cup, plus maybe a few others
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#106

Post by Deuce »

JazzNU wrote: Sun Sep 26, 2021 8:54 pm
Suliso wrote: Sun Sep 26, 2021 7:36 pm
Whom do you see as particularly promising from the rest of the World?
There are great juniors coming out of the US. The top junior right now is Chinese. There is a recent junior GS winner from Argentina that is starting to climb the rankings. Players that are already rising in the ATP include Sebastian, Frances, Cristian, Lloyd, Jensen and Brandon. SoonWoo Koon just won his first title today. I'm guessing there are several more.
^ I would not include Tiafoe in this group. He's been at this level longer than the others, and has been stagnant for a while now. Talented, to be sure - and a fine career, certainly - but improving significantly now or in the future - doubtful.

As for Isner not shaking Zverev's hand... no-one here knows why he didn't shake his hand. It's pure speculation to say that it's because of the sexual assault allegation. That's a 'good story', but is it accurate? Maybe it is, maybe it's not. Maybe it's because Zverev allegedly said that team world would not win another point after a particular match. Or maybe there was nothing to it at all. He did seem to acknowledge him with a tip of his head.
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#107

Post by JazzNU »

dmforever wrote: Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:22 am
Since everyone here knows I'm the biggest Isner fan around, I think I just need to say that he won't shake Zverev's hand, but he'll sure as heck avidly and publicly support a president whom multiple women with stories at least as credible as Zverev's ex's said sexually assaulted them and who bragged about grabbing women by the you know what on live air. Hypocrite much, John?

Kevin
Yes, I said this in the other thread. He also had a warm greeting with him at the net following their match. Someone was trying to ask Stephanie when this was taken because someone else thought it was a photo after said match and that's why he wasn't shaking his hand, it would've been a second hand shake and unnecessary. Sascha doesn't have a jacket on, something I hadn't noticed initially, so that's another possibility. Of course Stephanie didn't answer that person, she's trying to get something/anything trending.
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#108

Post by ti-amie »

At the Laver Cup, Europe Might Be Too Good
After Europe’s fourth straight win, an organizer promised Team World would win “at some point.” He didn’t say when.

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Team Europe has claimed the Laver Cup in each year of the competition. This time, the score was 14-1.Credit...Clive Brunskill/Getty Images For Laver Cup

By Christopher Clarey
Sept. 27, 2021, 7:50 a.m. ET

BOSTON — After three down-to-the-wire editions, the Laver Cup finally came up short of drama.

It happens, and considering European players’ long-running dominance of men’s tennis, it is frankly more surprising that the first three Laver Cups were suspense magnets than that this year’s edition was a disappointing blowout.

Even without the stars who make up the Big Three in men’s tennis — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic — Team Europe had nothing but top 10 players in its six-man squad in Boston. Its opponent, Team World, did not have any, and it showed in the final score, 14-1, which was by far the most lopsided in the event’s brief history.

Despite all the careful planning and big investment in this team competition, the bottom line is that Team Europe and Bjorn Borg, its captain, have won every Laver Cup. They have an excellent chance of remaining undefeated in London next year and beyond considering the youth and talent of rising stars like the 2021 U.S. Open champion Daniil Medvedev, his Russian countryman Andrey Rublev, Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece and Alexander Zverev of Germany.

That competitive imbalance is potentially a big problem for the Laver Cup, the international team event created by Federer and his management company Team8 in 2017.

“I think a Team World win would be good for everyone,” said John McEnroe, Team World’s captain. “I think the event needs it. I was wondering why Russia was part of Europe. I don’t think it is, but that’s just me.”

One cannot blame McEnroe for thinking creatively, even desperately, at this stage. Unfortunately for McEnroe, much of Russia is indeed in continental Europe, and the country traditionally takes part in European sporting competitions. Even if eastern Russia is in Asia, Medvedev and the Russians will remain part of Team Europe, according to Tony Godsick, the Laver Cup’s chief executive.

“We won’t make the change,” Godsick said Sunday night. “We’re not going to adjust this thing. It will be cyclical. I promise you, the world team will win at some point.”

The Laver Cup, with its three-day format and blue and red color scheme for team uniforms, was modeled after golf’s venerable and successful Ryder Cup, and certainly took the modeling too far this time by being played in the same country on the same weekend.

That was not to the upstart tennis competition’s benefit, even though the crowds and the atmosphere were terrific in Boston. A search of “Cup” on Google news on Sunday night produced a top-10 that was all Ryder Cup results from Whistling Straits.

Godsick said the scheduling overlap was not intentional. Both events were postponed in 2020, and he said that the Laver Cup has a designated week on the tennis schedule that could not be changed.

The Ryder Cup, which was first contested in 1927 in Worcester, Mass., had to evolve to become a major event and commercial juggernaut. Originally a competition between the United States and Britain, it only became a runaway success after players from other European nations joined the British team in 1979.

But if the Russians are remaining part of Team Europe in the Laver Cup, not much other tinkering can be done in the geography department. Team World already is open to every non-European nation and had players this year from Argentina (Diego Schwartzman), Australia (Nick Kyrgios), Canada (Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime) and the United States (Reilly Opelka and John Isner).

For now, McEnroe is 0-4 as its captain, and his Laver Cup rivalry with his old friend Borg has not been nearly as balanced as their rivalry when they were playing classic Grand Slam finals in the 1980s.

“I normally do like you,” the gray-haired McEnroe said to the gray-haired Borg on Sunday at the awards ceremony in the TD Garden. “I hate your guts right now.”

McEnroe was only half kidding. Arms folded in his courtside chair, he looked like a man experiencing indigestion for much of this long weekend.

Technically, the Laver Cup is an exhibition. It offers no ranking points even though it is a sanctioned ATP Tour event.

But the captains and the players have never treated it as an exhibition, and Team World’s failure to compete in Boston was certainly not linked to a failure to care. Their expressions were often anguished and their body language often tense as they lost critical point after critical point, usually in the match tiebreakers that substitute for third sets.

“It’s not an exhibition,” Opelka said. “If this was an exhibition, it would not have been 14-1. I can guarantee you that.”

Opelka, a towering and bearded player at 6-foot-11 who lost both his matches in his Laver Cup debut, confessed that he had been skeptical until he experienced the event himself this year.

“It looked too good to be true,” he said of the close finishes in 2017, 2018 and 2019. “And then I got here, and the way Johnny Mac started speaking about it changed everything. He’s a true legend. That was priceless being able to spend time with him.”

The Laver Cup’s capacity to bring together tennis’s past and present stars for meaningful exchanges is one of its strengths. So is its format, in which victories are worth one point on the first day, two points on the second and three points on the third. That was intended to prevent a meaningless final day. But while four matches were scheduled on Sunday, Europe clinched victory after only one, with Zverev and Rublev defeating Opelka and Shapovalov, 6-2, 6-7 (4), 10-3. It was yet another close match that went Europe’s way. It was also a potentially edgy one.

After Zverev lost in doubles on Friday night with Matteo Berrettini, McEnroe said that Zverev told him that would be the last match Team World was going to win. McEnroe later acknowledged that Zverev was teasing, but McEnroe said he was eager for “bulletin-board material.”

After McEnroe informed his team of the comment on Friday, the response was predictably bellicose and Opelka responded with: “He also said he’s innocent.” That was an apparent reference to published allegations of domestic violence from Zverev’s former girlfriend, Olya Sharypova.

Sharypova has not filed criminal charges against Zverev over the incidents, which she told the publication Slate occurred in 2019. Zverev has repeatedly denied abusing Sharypova and has continued to play on the ATP Tour, winning the Olympic gold medal in singles in Tokyo and reaching the semifinals of the U.S. Open earlier this month before competing in the Laver Cup.

On Sunday night, Laver Cup organizers announced before Team World’s final news conference that the team would field only “tennis-related questions.” In a separate interview, Opelka later declined to speak about Zverev.

The ATP Tour announced earlier this year that it would review its approach to handling players who are accused of domestic abuse or sexual misconduct. It currently has no formal policy.


Zverev turned out to be correct, though, that the Friday’s doubles win would be Team World’s last victory in Boston. His victory on Sunday with the hard-hitting Rublev marked the third straight time that Zverev has won the decisive point in the Laver Cup.

He looked very much like Team Europe’s new leader in Boston on the court and in the post-match interviews.
Though Federer made the trip to Boston, he did so only as a spectator and cheerleader, navigating the TD Garden on crutches after knee surgery in August.

At age 40, it is unclear when or if he will return to the tour, but what is clear is that this European team was still unstoppable without him or the other members of the Big Three: Nadal and Djokovic.

Carrying the Laver Cup forward without that superstar power will be a much bigger challenge.

“I’m definitely not worried about the event’s future,” Godsick said. “Tennis always produces new superstars. It always has, and it always will. There are new people holding up Grand Slam trophies. You see it coming now. If anything, I think we were lucky to be able to launch it in the era of such incredible tennis players.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/spor ... &smtyp=cur
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#109

Post by ashkor87 »

i dont see the point in a Europe versus RoW event.. there isn't a single player outside Europe who can compete with the Europeans! Maybe they should make it Western Europe versus Eastern Europe, or maybe make it like Hopman Cup, if women can play, the RoW would have a chance!
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#110

Post by meganfernandez »

ashkor87 wrote:i dont see the point in a Europe versus RoW event.. there isn't a single player outside Europe who can compete with the Europeans! Maybe they should make it Western Europe versus Eastern Europe, or maybe make it like Hopman Cup, if women can play, the RoW would have a chance!
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#111

Post by ponchi101 »

As this is an exo, and therefore the sole purpose of this is money, combining men and women would be bad business in that there would be revenue lost. We talked about it before. A "NAVRATILOVA CUP" would be way more interesting in terms of how competitive it would be.
So dropping three men from the Laver Cup from each team and adding three women may be great fun, but not as profitable as having TWO events. Somewhere, a team of marketing experts are thinking this out.
(Maybe not. Maybe it is only us brilliant tennis TAT'ers that have these advanced thoughts).
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#112

Post by ashkor87 »

meganfernandez wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:11 am
ashkor87 wrote:i dont see the point in a Europe versus RoW event.. there isn't a single player outside Europe who can compete with the Europeans! Maybe they should make it Western Europe versus Eastern Europe, or maybe make it like Hopman Cup, if women can play, the RoW would have a chance!
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he he, yes, true enough...
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#113

Post by ponchi101 »

Agree. Megan maybe hit the solution to not only The Laver Cup, but to a lot of other things :D
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#114

Post by dmforever »

What about, instead of reducing the number of men and replacing them with women, an equal number of women were added, mixed doubles matches were added, and the whole thing was made into a week long event? And what about adding players who were retired, but who still wanted to play, and those matches counted? And maybe make the match ups random, a la a tournament draw? Or just some of them? Or randomizing how many points each match is worth? Or randomizing if it's a one-set match, a 2 out of 3, or just a 10-point tie break shoot out right before the match? Just throwing the pasta against the wall here to see what sticks...:)

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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#115

Post by meganfernandez »

dmforever wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:16 pm What about, instead of reducing the number of men and replacing them with women, an equal number of women were added, mixed doubles matches were added, and the whole thing was made into a week long event? And what about adding players who were retired, but who still wanted to play, and those matches counted? And maybe make the match ups random, a la a tournament draw? Or just some of them? Or randomizing how many points each match is worth? Or randomizing if it's a one-set match, a 2 out of 3, or just a 10-point tie break shoot out right before the match? Just throwing the pasta against the wall here to see what sticks...:)

Kevin
Yeah I agree there are other solutions. Everyone loved Hopman Cup. I worry that a week-long event is too much in an already-packed schedule. I kind of like the idea of a retired player on each team, but would the quality be there? Sampras vs Henman or something? Davenport vs Hingis? Not sure these layers want to play again in their current form, but maybe they would want the challenge of preparing. How about Borg and McEnroe reenact their 80 and 81 finals on alternating years, shot for shot? :)
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#116

Post by JazzNU »

I realize this isn't a regular tour event, but it is far more than a regular exhibition, so I'm not completely clear on the dislike for the overall idea here, which is what I feel like I've been getting around these parts for the last few months. It's a competitive tournament, players give actual effort in it. It's been the way they've competed in it since they started, no one is doing repeated trick shots to entertain the crowd the way they do in an actual exhibition.

This is a great showcase for tennis similar to Ryder Cup for golf, one that has secured impressive TV deals around the world so that it has quite a bit of reach. So, why don't you like what it can do for the sport?

And here's another question for you all. Why do you like and talking positively about the Hopman Cup and not call it an exhibition, but hate or at least dislike Laver Cup?
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#117

Post by Suliso »

Don't count me in on any Laver cup hate, but maybe because people think this event damaged further Davis Cup?
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#118

Post by ponchi101 »

I don't hate or dislike the Laver Cup. It simply is not competitive.
Granted, on day one, two points here and there would have made it ROTW 3, Europe 1. But it wasn't.
I simply do not believe that a cup that is always won by the same team will last too long. It was what happened to the Wightman Cup. When the USA Vs Great Britain became non competitive, the cup was over.
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#119

Post by ponchi101 »

dmforever wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:16 pm What about, instead of reducing the number of men and replacing them with women, an equal number of women were added, mixed doubles matches were added, and the whole thing was made into a week long event? And what about adding players who were retired, but who still wanted to play, and those matches counted? And maybe make the match ups random, a la a tournament draw? Or just some of them? Or randomizing how many points each match is worth? Or randomizing if it's a one-set match, a 2 out of 3, or just a 10-point tie break shoot out right before the match? Just throwing the pasta against the wall here to see what sticks...:)

Kevin
Only thing I would say is that anything longer than 4 days would be too much. The finances of all those players would also be too much. But, as you say, something that will stick.
But I really don't know.
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Re: Laver Cup 9/24-9/26 2021

#120

Post by JazzNU »

ponchi101 wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 7:06 pm I don't hate or dislike the Laver Cup. It simply is not competitive.
Granted, on day one, two points here and there would have made it ROTW 3, Europe 1. But it wasn't.
I simply do not believe that a cup that is always won by the same team will last too long. It was what happened to the Wightman Cup. When the USA Vs Great Britain became non competitive, the cup was over.
I'd definitely say your comments have made it seem like at the very least you dislike the Laver Cup, so I'm surprised to hear you say this.

Simply not competitive? Is there a reason you're using this year as a measuring stick for overall competitiveness? It came down to the final match at the 2019 and the final day in 2018. This is why I'm asking these questions. To me, there seems to be an unwillingness by many to give the Laver Cup a chance, just figure out a way to make it seem like it's doomed no matter what and get it off the schedule as quick as possible.
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