I know that the Davis Cup has become a non-event for even many tennis fans; I find that shame.
I am a tennis fan and a sport fan, and one of the biggest disappointment to me is the lack of national pride in Tennis. Now, it doesn’t mean that there is no national pride, it just means that there isn't much of it.
Other than soccer, no other worldwide Sport has the parity that Tennis has.
With all respect to basketball, it's popularity or quality of play is negligible outside of the US. Golf has some worldwide players, but the majority of top players are either American or British.
The problem with the tennis player, and usually the top players, is that they would rather rest when no money is involved. In addition, they sometimes prefer regular ATP Tour events rather then playing for their country.
Until the Beijing Olympics, most of the top players would skip the Olympic tournament and they only really went to China because the ATP points were added to the tournament.
For all the credit and love that Roger Federer gets, I don’t think he gets enough criticism for not playing for the Swiss Davis Cup team.
When he started to play well, he got a pass, since Switzerland didn’t have another top 100 player in the World, but today the Swiss have Stanislas Wawrinka and together they would make it deep in the tournament every year.
Regardless, tomorrow eight countries will face off to try and reach the Davis cup semi finals and some high quality tennis will be played in some of the stadiums, even though the top four players in the World won’t be in action.
Czech Republic—Argentina
Cez Arena, Ostrava
Stadium Capacity: 7500 (including 300 temporary seats)
Team Czech Republic: Tomas Berdych (20), Radek Stepanek (21), Ivo Minar (64), Lukas Dlouhy (236).
Team Argentina: Juan Martin Del Potro (5), Jose Acasuso (36), Leonardo Mayer (61), Juan Monaco (62).
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