Even if the\u00a0Davis Cup Final 8\u00a0that begins Tuesday in Bologna, Italy, is the sixth edition of the team competition to have the champion decided at a neutral site, there are those who would prefer to see some more changes.<\/p>\n
Perhaps go back to home-and-away matchups all the way through.<\/p>\n
And maybe shift it from an annual contest to something less frequent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey got to do something (with) this event, because I think playing every year, I mean \u2014 it is not as good as it might be if you\u2019re playing every two or three years,\u201d said\u00a0No. 1-ranked Carlos Alcaraz, the six-time Grand Slam champion who is coming off a runner-up finish to\u00a0Jannik Sinner at the ATP Finals\u00a0in Turin on Sunday. \u201cI think if the tournament is played, like, every two years or every three years, the players, the commitment of the players, it\u2019s going to be even more because it\u2019s unique, it\u2019s different. You\u2019re not able to play every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alcaraz will lead Spain against the No. 4-seeded Czech Republic in the quarterfinals on Thursday as he tries to win\u00a0the Davis Cup\u00a0for the first time. Last year, Alcaraz was part of the squad that was eliminated in the opening round of the Final 8 at home in Malaga, where\u00a0Rafael Nadal played the final match\u00a0of his storied career before retiring.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really want to win the Davis Cup one day,\u201d the 22-year-old Alcaraz said, \u201cbecause for me, it\u2019s a really important, important tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sinner led Italy to two consecutive championships in 2023 and 2024, but he decided to sit out the Davis Cup this time around. So did his countryman, Lorenzo Musetti, who also participated in the ATP Finals last week.<\/p>\n
Sinner, who won two of his four Grand Slam titles this season and was\u00a0the runner-up to Alcaraz\u00a0at the other two majors in 2025, joined his rival in advocating for switching things up with the Davis Cup.<\/p>\n
Maybe, Sinner suggested, it could be spread out over two years, including staging the semifinals early in the second season of the cycle and the final at the end of that season.<\/p>\n
That, he surmised, would make it \u201ceven bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never, unfortunately, played the Davis Cup, the \u2018real\u2019 Davis Cup, where it\u2019s … playing in Argentina or in Brazil, where you have the whole stadium … for the other team,” Sinner said. “I think this is Davis Cup, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
Count Pierre-Hugues Herbert, a 34-year-old Frenchman who helped his country win the Davis Cup before a home crowd at Lille in 2017, was another player who would like to see each of the closing rounds be played at one of the nations involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new format has been a bit challenging for us in France, I think, especially for me,\u201d said Herbert, who owns a career Grand Slam in doubles, \u201cbecause I felt like something a bit died in this competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
This week’s finals will begin with No. 3 seed France taking on Belgium on Tuesday. Then No. 1 Italy \u2014 whose roster includes Flavio Cobolli,\u00a0Lorenzo Sonego\u00a0and 2021 Wimbledon finalist Matteo Berrettini \u2014 will face Austria on Wednesday, before the last two quarterfinals are held on Thursday, including No. 2 Germany and\u00a0Alexander Zverev\u00a0against Argentina.<\/p>\n
One semifinal will be played on Friday, and the other on Saturday, before the champion is determined on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz and Spain have a tough task, going up against a Czech team that includes a pair of top-20 players in Jiri Lehecka and\u00a0Jakub Mensik\u00a0and eliminated the United States in the qualifying round in September.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinning against them,\u201d said Mensik, a 20-year-old who is the youngest player at the Final 8, \u201cbrings us a lot of confidence into the Final 8.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even if the\u00a0Davis Cup Final 8\u00a0that begins Tuesday in Bologna, Italy, is the sixth edition of the team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-290112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}