Cheryl Murray

• Serbia's great Davis Cup hope

  2010-12-02 15:51:05
  

  Davis Cup is a bit of a tennis oddity. The International Tennis Federation (the first time I typed that, I wrote ‘Federer’ instead of ‘Federation’) touts Davis Cup as a really big deal...and in some ways it is. Crowds love it and players always talk about how it’s their big dream. Regardless, I can’t seem to shake the nagging feeling that the tournament as a whole feels like...well...an afterthought of sorts.
  
  It seems that it gets wedged into the schedule, most often between tournaments when the top players are exhausted. Which leads me to my next point......many of the top players fail to consider it a priority any more.
  
  Make no mistake. I don’t blame Federer or Murray or even Roddick this year for saying “hey, this is too much”. First, and foremost, it adds to an already jammed schedule. With constant worries of injury, illness and fatigue on the minds of the players, is it any wonder that many of them choose to pass?
  
  As I was corrected in my former statement that they offer no ranking points for DC play, I will say that the piddling amount they DO offer is hardly much of an incentive.  Match wins earn something like 40 points in early rounds to 75 in the final.  Yay. Perhaps one could argue that offering points for something that should be a team effort detracts from the whole idea of Davis Cup. Maybe. Then again, offering points hasn’t hurt the Olympics any, has it? And if we’re going to ask our top draws to go out and play a series of best of 5 matches, maybe we should reward them with a few more points
  
  In one area, the various countries have skirted around the ITF; that being their steadfast rule of no prize money. Most of the countries that are contenders offer “appearance fees” to try to entice players to participate. Generally, I don’t like appearance fees, as I think it gobbles up too much prize money. But in this case, the guys should get at least SOMETHING for their time and hard work.
  
  All of that being said, I take my proverbial hat off to Novak Djokovic, who makes himself available to the Serbian team almost without fail. Murray and Federer don’t even pretend to care anymore, and Nadal gives lip service to DC, but has been conspicuously absent from quite a few ties recently. Not so with Djokovic.
  
  He WANTS to win that thing for Serbia. He really, truly does. And for that reason alone, I look forward to this weekend’s competition. I’m not saying that the fellows on the French squad don’t want to win – obviously they do. But I can’t help but quietly cheer for a team lead by a guy who says “winning Davis Cup is my dream” and actually MEANS it.

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