Every year, the ITF or International Tennis Federation, the governing body for both men and women's tennis, holds a year-long knockout competition between countries called the Davis Cup, named in honor of the Harvard brats who first organized the tournament at the end of the nineteenth century. (Only England and the United States squared off that year.) Next to Wimbledon and the French and U.S. Opens, it is the oldest institution in tennis, and prior to the advent of Open competition, which, in 1968, for the first time granted professional players access to the four Majors, was universally regarded as the most venerable. Roughly until the 1970s, when total individual earnings and Slam titles began to define success, winning the Davis Cup for one's country was considered a career's highest achievement. Champions like Fred Perry, Bill Tilden, and Don Budge valued their Davis Cup victories over their Wimbledon wins, and Budge, who competed against wunderkind Gottfried von Cramm in 1937 in what is widely valued as the greatest match in tennis history, said of his experience that competing in the Davis Cup made him tremble and vomit with anxiety, whereas competing at the Slams merely titillated him. In a period when honor rather than accomplishment defined one's worth as an athlete, when conduct and performance both were one's legacy, the privilege of playing for the Cup brought competitors to tears, regardless of whether they won or lost. It's hard to imagine now, in an age obsessed with records and GOATs, in which we judge the quality of our athletes solely by what we can count, but for most of the history of tennis, Davis Cup, which added nothing to a player's athletic profile or portfolio, was more important--to players and audiences alike--than all the other tournaments combined, including the Majors.Davis Cup play is an esoteric process. Every year, the sixteen best teams advance to a World Group, where in stages they face one another in elimination, best-of-five ties. A tie designates a round of competition, composed of five rubbers, or individual matches. In the first two rubbers, players from each country compete in a singles format. Then, each country selects two players to compete in a doubles rubber. The fourth and fifth rubbers, depending on the number of wins scored by each country, may or may not make any difference for whether a team advances to the next round. A match that determines which of the teams will advance is called a decisive rubber.
This weekend the Davis Cup held its quarterfinals round, with Serbia facing Croatia, Argentina facing Russia, the Czech Republic facing Chile, and defending champions Spain facing France, which hadn't beaten them in over seventy years. (If you're wondering what happened to the United States, we lost early to the Serbs.) Since 2000, when it captured its first Cup title, Spain's team has been something of a titan, winning again in 2004, 2008, and 2009. They entered their quarterfinal against France as the overwhelming favorite, with three of its team members ranked within the top twenty. And although Spain would be missing its strongest player in Rafael Nadal, France too would perform without its top talent, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. With the tie to be played in France, on fast indoor hardcourts (a French preference and therefore, in conjunction with their home support, a real advantage over the slower Spaniards), experts predicted a close tie, with Spain likely winning it 3-2.
Unfortunately, a third day of competition proved unnecessary, as this morning Michael Llodra and Julien Benneteau ("who?") dispatched Fernando Verdasco and Feliciano Lopez in the doubles rubber, sealing the tie for France on the earlier wins by Monfils over Ferrer and Llodra over Verdasco in singles. Rather than succumb to their rivals after a protracted struggle, as was expected, France swept Spain 3-0, upsetting the greatest continuous Davis Cup dynasty in over forty years.
With three top-twenty players, how could Spain lose? Consult the image at the top of this post, in which four impeccably dressed playboys loiter about their own handsomeness. Standing at the far left is Rafael Nadal, apparently giddy at the thought of being so handsome. To his right, Feliciano Lopez busies himself with handsome man paraphernalia. Next to Lopez, Fernando Verdasco exploits a lewd, rapidly-repeating style of handsomeness. Finally, at the far right, we find David Ferrer attempting merely to be present. (Not pictured is Nicolas Almagro, who was probably off somewhere breaking his other wrist and wearing handsome sombreros.) These guys are Reservoir Dogs. Assassins. They boil with confidence and spit charisma. Who can possibly outclass them? So, assured of their dominance, Rafa flies to South Africa to rouse David Villa and the no-goal-scoring Fernando Torres. Feliciano keeps on straightening that tie. Fernando, lately, has been in a bit of a rut, so he just sputters his hand even faster. And David, as always, quietly concentrates and prepares for work. (Nicolas, lugging that giant acorn trophy, has yet to clear airport customs.) Five champions but one competitor. This is how four decadent French ghosts and pretenders to the throne overthrew the kingdom.
In the first rubber, for five long sets Ferrer fought valiantly against the physically imposing and emotionally intimidating Monfils, who also, by the way, with his voodoo-chile telepathy, sucks the sanity from his opponent's brain. But in the end, the slick indoor court and the crowd's bias proved insurmountable. In the second rubber, his hand probably tired from all that illicit "preparation," Verdasco flopped against Llodra. And with no doubles reputation to speak of, Spain ceded the third rubber in a little over two hours. Somewhere deep in the third set against Llodra and Benneteau, Verdasco and Lopez performed homoerotic rituals of encouragement but to no avail. Poor Almagro, having finally gained entrance to the country, with his acorn trophy in tow, never even got to play. By the time he arrived, the French were already smoking and reciting Verlaine, and painting one another in the nude.
For those of us who follow Davis Cup, nostalgic for its eminence, secretly believing it to be the lone nobility in a vulgar world, Spain's loss, like Richard II's abdication, came first as a fact and later as an indignation. Sooner or later, every dynasty collapses. The Ch'in, from whom China took its very name, lasted barely a generation. But we also expect our conquerors to be decisive, fearless, deliberate. Not French. What are the laws of this terrible life where those who took a perfectly good and deadly libation and added bubbles vanquish a people for whom anything sweeter than rat poison and piss is effete? (Have you tasted Spanish port?)
To David Ferrer, the Antonio Salieri of men's tennis, an A, with my gratitude. To Lopez, from whom we never expect more than to look sexy and serve well, a B-, because although he wore his long hair like debauched lingerie, he let a pair of Alain Delon wannabes break him. To the masturbating Verdasco, a C-. It's hard to return today to the court you lost on yesterday, I know, but maybe you should have won your first match, you fucking rooster. And to Nadal, whose absence made no actual difference, in that he planned not to compete anyway, an F. You want to support Spain in its first ever World Cup final. Fine. That's your right. But so did Ferrer, and Lopez, and even Verdasco when he wasn't busy admiring himself in the mirror--no word yet from the wandering Almagro--and they sucked it up. They went to France, where everything is worse, and did their feeble best to avoid flaming out to a team unworthy even to lose to Spain's warriors let alone beat them. Rafa, the superstar, cashed in his chips and went on vacation, leaving his teammates without even the support of their best player. No one was asking Nadal to play. We understand and accept that he needs to rest. But he should have been in France anyway, cheering his brothers, rather than in South Africa, cheering his countrymen.
Seneca and Cicero, the two great Roman advocates for friendship, argued that a man who loves his companion--women don't have friends, I guess--is responsible for exposing his partner's ignorance, arrogance, and indolence. Friends do not console; they challenge. In order to improve you, they spar with you. They point out your weaknesses and compel you to overcome them. It is their sacred duty to tell you that you fucked up or that you're full of it. That you need new pants or a haircut or a library card. So Rafa, on behalf of your millions of fans and your four neglected friends, I'm here to tell you, you fucked up. Bad. No one berates you for not playing. With or without you, Spain deserved to lose. But your teammates needed you there to watch them lose. And we, your fans, needed you there to watch you watch them lose. It was a serious lapse, your decision not to attend the tie. Others may not understand, may think this criticism trivial. But we appreciate the gravity of Davis Cup competition, its honor, its increase of spirit. You of all people, having begun your career in the Estadio de la Cartujo, your talent crystallized by the pressure of that epochal final, where you, an unheralded eighteen-year-old, secured Spain's second Cup win in four years by defeating Andy Roddick, you above everyone should know: Davis Cup, like no other tournament in athletics, not even the Olympics, which is degraded and commercial, promises nothing to its carriers, not endorsements, not money, not fame or prestige. A few avid enthusiasts may remember a team's triumph, but who can recall its constituents? Who, alongside Budge and von Cramm, battled for rights to the 1937 Cup? No one remembers. Those lucky few who will hoist the trophy don't obtain anything, not even recognition. All that they win is the honor, which fades, the glory, which eludes, and the memory, which endures only in them. You of all people realize what makes the Davis Cup special: its uselessness, its obsolescence, its lack of capital, the tenuous awe it inspires by driving athletes--some great, others merely uncommon--to feats of excellence impossible to achieve by any personal standard. Davis Cup is the one competition on Earth in which players compete simply because they can. By choosing spectacle over tradition, you dishonor that heritage.
As for the Frenchmen, smartly played, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Even without Tsonga you toppled an empire, and that deserves an A. So good luck, you sissy-blue, Victor Hugo-reading, Vichy-commiserating, Napoleon-noodling, miming tiddlywinks, and, also, fuck the lot of you.
Slothrop: I want this write-up of the Spanish SNAFU at the Davis Cup included in the Best American Sports Writing of the Cenzoic Era, it's that good. I am biased, though, since I was raised on Al Bundy and his first commandment––"It is wrong to be French."
More importantly Slothy's left wondering about whether this is a changing of the guards scenario: The Davis Cup was once important. Perhaps it is no longer? Perhaps Nadal's absence either catalyzed its degradation of status or is a by-product of it? For if majors were once less important than the Davis Cup, but are now more important, it stands to reason that the Davis Cup while once important, is no longer.
Koko Gorilla mentioned that the Frenchies didn't have their best players show up either, so is it possible that nations no longer approach the tournament with the prestige of yester-eras? Nadal is culpable of not standing by his teammates, no contention there. But if the Davis Cup has slipped into more of a spectacle than a prestigious tournament (as marked by quality of talent absent), could Nadal's absence be more forgivable, or at least understandable? And even if Nadal's absence merely precipitated the downgrade of the Davis Cup's prestige, do you think the Davis Cup now, today, is a less valued enterprise?
Koko: I think everyone in the tennis world would agree that Davis Cup isn't what it used to be. Its slip in stature, though, has nothing to do with the quality of its players and everything to do with the mid-century transformation of tennis from haute-bourgeois pastime to global corporate enterprise. There is, frankly, no real money to be made on or in Davis Cup competition, so it receives less advertising and, as a result, has less clout. And because a player's reputation depends on how well he performs at the Slam events, all but the most dedicated will pass on Davis Cup if playing in it threatens their chances at a win elsewhere, either by fatigue or injury. The men's tour in particular leaves little time between mandatory tournaments for rest or recovery, and with their schedules non-negotiable and their bodies stressed beyond health or hygiene, only an irrational competitor would sacrifice his livelihood for the sake of national pride.
That said, the circuit abounds in irrational players, particularly in countries like Argentina or Croatia, that have something to prove, or in political foundries, like Russia and the US, that want the rest of the planet to remember who's boss. So it isn't terribly rare to find players like David Nalbandian and Novak Djokovic--top contenders at any Major--toiling away at ties whatever the cost to their own careers. In tennis, among professionals and fans, a subculture persists that reveres Davis Cup as though nothing has changed since 1900. Despite its decidedly second-tier status among advertisers, sponsors, and record-chasers (like Federer, whose attitude toward Davis Cup has always been tepid), for these aficionados the Cup continues to rival the more celebrated pageants at Wimbledon and at the Opens. Nadal belongs, or perhaps belonged, to that subculture.
We've all seen Star Trek, and we've all, probably, in private or in public, mocked its devotees. But it doesn't matter that most civilized minds find the show ridiculous. To the Sam Weirs and Gordon Crisps, Star Trek shows our species at the pinnacle of its progress fulfilling all the intellectual and moral promise that we, in the crude 21st century, squander in our everyday, Earth-bound lives. When trekkies pool their moms' money to hold a convention, and, say, Mr. Rosso doesn't show up, that's expected. Even when Alan White, the bully secretly enamoured of science fiction, fails to make an appearance, we accept it. But when one of their own, a Bill Haverchuck or sensible Harris Trinsky, skips on the gala, his absence means something else. A Bill or Harris understands the isolation, the furious, concerted effort to keep passion alive when everywhere outsiders assail it. Life within a minority makes its members a brotherhood. So when one of the tribe turns his back, his action cuts deeper, feels crueler. The larger culture's dismissal of Star Trek doesn't diminish the fan's betrayal of his own values, as well as those of his friends; on the contrary, it amplifies it.
We who cherish Davis Cup are the tennis geeks. Nadal was one of us; he may be one of us still. But in either case, he ditched us at our most sensitive moment, when we, decorated in all the most garish greens, like giant celery stalks, stood disbelieving in the parking lot, the compound eyes on our alien heads filling with thousands of tiny tears, our oversize ears shrunken in disappointment. We, the ostracized, were rejected by one of our own. When a freak stuffs you in your locker, you see it coming, and you prepare emotionally for its consequences. But when a fellow geek blows you off to go hang out with cheerleaders and basketball jocks? That's when you ask yourself: has he become a pod-person? Part of a cult? Neal Schweiber did warn of it.
Also, for the record, Tsonga missed the tie because he was injured, not because he wanted to watch soccer.
Slothrop: Spending most his time with cheerleaders, Slothrop has seen not a nano-second of Star Trek. Perhaps making flailing assumptions in an attempt to sully a pristine consciousness is Koko's real problem?
Koko: You have no empathy.
Slothrop: Erections don't require empathy.
Blondie: As both former cheerleader and closeted Star Trek fan (also: mathlete), I'm trying mightily to decide whether to take offense. At what, I'm not certain; perhaps Slothy's inability to fathom one of my kind?
Slothrop: Slothrop's inability to fathom a Cheerleader who can't read? Say wha?
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