Rookie Sensation
Rookie Sensation
Alcaraz and Team Europe win the 7th Laver Cup
Note from Christopher: I have done a reading from my book The Master on Federer and the Laver Cup that paying subscribers can access above.
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This time Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe are leaving together.
Their rightly famous rivalry as players got cut rather short. They only faced off 14 times on tour over less than three years, including that transcendent yin-and-yang Wimbledon final in 1980, before a burned-out Borg exited center stage at age 25, leaving McEnroe to search for new tennis meaning.
But their later-life rivalry as Laver Cup captains lasted quite a bit longer. They were in their courtside chairs in Prague for the inaugural event in 2017 and bowed out on Sunday night in Berlin as Borg’s European team, led by Carlos Alcaraz, defeated McEnroe’s World team in a thriller, 13-11.
Final tally: 5 Laver Cups for Borg and Team Europe, 2 for McEnroe and Team World.
The Laver Cup was a second chapter that neither sexagenarian could have anticipated, and Borg and McEnroe leave with the event increasingly well established but not yet essential.
Dreamed up by Roger Federer and his agent Tony Godsick, the Laver Cup remains a hybrid at age 7. It is technically an exhibition, paying big appearance fees and lacking ranking points as well as a thoroughly meritocratic selection process. But the Laver Cup, for the most part, has not been played in the spirit of an exhibition and pays each member of the winning team $250,000 while the losers get no prize money.
“One of my friends that actually was on my college team texted me this morning, 'Yeah, it’s the Laver Cup. It’s all rigged, huh?” said American Ben Shelton on Sunday. “I was like, ‘I don’t know. We’re out here battling. If it’s rigged, I haven’t got the memo yet. They haven’t given me the script.’”
It is not entirely clear what it all means, but the players, at least a critical mass of them, are truly competing. Rackets get tossed. Tears get spilled. Nerves get jangled. That was the way Federer wanted it when he was playing for Team Europe and still the way he wants it as he slaps backs in the locker room in retirement and sits in the front row of the stands indoors with sponsors and tinted eyewear firmly in place.
At this stage, it still feels like his event, a Federer invitational, more than the Ryder Cup of tennis. In a sport awash in content and woefully short on offseason, it is understandable that there are naysayers, just as there were when the event was launched into an already overcrowded calendar in 2017.
But I deploy the same litmus test now that I used in that inaugural year. Is pro tennis better off with or without the Laver Cup? I say with, based on the emotions, drama and new-look matchups it generates. I say with, based on the quality of the organization and the chance to reach significant yet underserved tennis markets like Chicago in 2018, Boston in 2021 and Berlin this year. I say with, based on the opportunity to keep tennis greats like Laver, Federer and incoming captains Andre Agassi and Yannick Noah even more deeply connected with the game and the current generation of players.
The Davis Cup, the original men’s team tennis event, once fulfilled this mission quite effectively, with retired stars like Arthur Ashe, John Newcombe, Manolo Santana, Boris Becker, Noah and McEnroe becoming captains for their nations. But the Davis Cup is sadly much diminished, though not necessarily moribund: a victim of its intermittent and sprawling multi-week format, dubious management and the Byzantine politics of the game. The Laver Cup did not cause that decline, although it has benefited, and it could be an obstacle to a Davis Cup revival with its prime September date and much more streamlined format.
Alcaraz did the double, playing the Davis Cup for Spain in Valencia the week before the Laver Cup. But the three Americans who led Team World this weekend – Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton – all skipped the United States Davis Cup matches in China.
Who could blame them? The money and buzz were certainly much better in Berlin, and though in the Davis Cup’s heyday, the Americans would have been grilled repeatedly over their priorities, there was barely a whisper about it. The Davis Cup’s long slide toward irrelevance is not optimal for tennis. It could use a thriving big-tent men’s team event with a rich tradition like the Davis Cup, which dates to 1900. The Laver Cup, with its continental groupings and six-man teams, only gives 12 players a showcase. The Davis Cup gives hundreds of players an opportunity to compete for their nations, which remains a more logical and resonant concept than representing, say, the world minus Europe.
But though the Laver Cup does not have ranking points or tradition, it does have more potential to create widespread interest than most of the tournaments on the circuit. That seems a sufficient raison d’être, although no guarantee of its long-term viability. It has a high overhead with its large player budget, premium presentation and current approach of changing cities for each edition. It has not made a profit every year despite ticket prices that many fans deem exorbitant, but it is no doubt a significant cut above much of the competition.
The ATP Tour is not standing in its way and has renewed its partnership with the Laver Cup for another five years and continues to include its matches in the tour’s official records even though Laver Cup singles matches, unlike other tour singles matches, are decided by a third-set match tiebreaker instead of a full set.
“There could be too many other tennis events, per se, but this one is working,” Godsick said in Berlin. “We have sold-out crowds. Every player loves to play. We have the biggest captains, the best sponsors. We have renewed sponsors already once. We are about to announce a bunch of new sponsors.”
Noah and Agassi will bring plenty of charisma to their posts in 2025 in San Francisco. They were and remain two of the most magnetic personalities in the game. They already faced off in team competition in 1991 when Noah, as captain, inspired the underdog French to a surprise Davis Cup victory over Agassi, Pete Sampras and the Americans in an emotional final in Lyon that turned into a national fête.
“At the very beginning of Laver Cup, I saw it as something against Davis Cup,” Noah told L’Équipe in Berlin. “You know me. I was an extremist when it came to damaging it. But given what Davis Cup has become, which is nothing at all, the Laver Cup occupies a different place. Ryder Cup, Laver Cup, all that makes sense. It’s an event that adds something else, in any case that’s the goal. You need to stay the course for several years and then it will naturally fit into the calendar to become an event destined to grow. It’s only seven years old. That’s very young, and already it’s big. I did not expect something so impressive.”
It is not every superstar’s priority. No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who just won the US Open, has yet to play in the Laver Cup, choosing to rest or focus on the Davis Cup. Novak Djokovic, the most successful men’s player of the Open era, has only played in the Laver Cup twice and skipped it the last two years, playing an exhibition in Bulgaria last week with Grigor Dimitrov, who did make it to Berlin.
The field is not only the crème de la crème. Thanasi Kokkinakis, a late addition to Team World because of injuries, was ranked just 78th.
But the Laver Cup, whatever the price, did finally get Alcaraz, the incandescent 21-year-old Spaniard who won the French Open and Wimbledon this year, splitting the four majors with Sinner.
Alcaraz did not disappoint, accounting for eight of Europe’s 13 points and proving decisive on the final day by lifting partner Casper Ruud to a surprise doubles victory over Shelton and Tiafoe to launch the European comeback. After Alexander Zverev rallied from a set and a break down to defeat Tiafoe to keep Team World from clinching victory, Alcaraz sealed the deal for Europe by defeating Fritz 6-2, 7-5 in the final singles match.
After Alcaraz’s downbeat North American tour, in which he lost early in Cincinnati and at the US Open, he was back in top gear in Berlin, grinning and creating on the stretch and the sprint, blasting cocksure forehands and carving angled volley winners and exquisite drop shots. His only defeat came in his opening doubles match with Zverev on Friday against Shelton and Fritz.
Otherwise, it was his weekend, and if he enjoyed himself as much as he appeared to enjoy himself, that was the best news to come out of Berlin for the Laver Cup.
Alcaraz is undeniably box office, just as Federer was undeniably box office.
CC