Most days of the year tennis is the epitome of individual sports.
An individualistic branch of individual wolves, to which every group is foreign.
Even doubles matches embody the anti-team nature of tennis, in at least two respects: in many cases doubles are made up of different countries, and even if two great singles players decide to play together, there is no guarantee they can succeed and beat couples made up of lesser quality players.
The complete in tennis is often smaller than the sum of its parts, in stark contrast to any team sport.
Only one factory has been trying for more than a hundred years to inspire team tennis and nationalism - the Davis Cup.
The results, it must be said, are not unequivocal.
On the one hand, many tennis players discover the power of the flag thanks to this competition, and are encouraged by an audience that is far from white sports on weekdays.
The atmosphere in the Davis Cup games is also less subdued than in a regular competition.
On the other hand, all attempts to turn the old factory into a kind of World Cup of tennis have so far failed.
To get closer to the format of football, in recent years the format of the competition has changed so that the Davis Cup final brings together 18 teams to one site, or to three sites (Madrid, Turin and Innsbruck) this year, due to corona constraints.
After the home stage, the top eight teams continue to the knockout stage, until the semifinals (Fridays and Saturdays this week) and the finals (Sunday).
In the coming years, by the way, the "World Cup of Tennis", like other prestigious competitions, is expected to migrate to the Arabian Peninsula - to Abu Dhabi.
To make the competition more rhythmic, the games were shortened.
No more five-match five-game contests spanning entire days.
Instead, get a TV format that distills entire dramas for short games.
The Croatian duo Fabic (right) and Katic,
And the dramas are not lacking: some leading teams have dropped out this time already in the home stage, the most prominent of which is Spain, the cup winner of 2019. Novak Djokovic's Serbia almost followed suit and rose from the house only from second place thanks to a better game difference.
Who will stop Russia?
Italy, led by Yannick Sinner, advanced from the home stage, but already lost in the quarter-finals to starless Croatia.
Herein lies the key to winning the Davis Cup in the new format: one star player is not enough, even if he is ranked in the top ten in the world;
Better a less glamorous but egalitarian composition, backed by a pair that specializes in doubles.
Like the Mata Fabic-Nikola Maktic couple who left no chance for the Italians.
To stop the Croats, one has to win the two singles games against them.
Although Serbia can do it in the semi-finals, it is Russia that is seen as the most threatening force.
With four senior tennis players in the squad (Medvedev, Rublev, Kratzev and Khachnov), she is considered the top candidate to lift the trophy for the third time in its history, after doing so in 2002 and 2006.
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