Despite criticizing the current format of the Davis Cup Finals as an “exhibition”, world No. 3 Alexander Zverev is wrapping up his season at the tournament.<\/p>\n
He recently expressed his desire for the men’s tennis World Cup to revert to traditional home-and-away ties, instead of eight countries battling for the title in a single host city, like this week in Bologna.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Zverev<\/a> has chosen to represent Germany and is the highest-ranked singles player competing at this week’s Finals after world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz withdrew due to an injury sustained at the ATP Finals.<\/a><\/p>\n Zverev is among several players who have called for significant changes to the Davis Cup recently. “The true Davis Cup is the home-and-away ties,” the former Olympic champion stated last week in Turin.<\/p>\n “In a way, yeah, the real Davis Cup is the atmosphere. To play against Italy in Italy, it would be a completely different atmosphere than playing Italy in Spain. I played against Nadal in a bullfighting arena. That’s for me the real Davis Cup.<\/p>\n “I always keep my opinion. I always said my opinion over the last couple years. I don’t think this Davis Cup is the real Davis Cup. It’s an exhibition tournament in a way that is called Davis Cup.”<\/p>\n However, the 28 year old was still pleased to represent his country at the Davis Cup Finals in Bologna, and is part of the German team alongside Jan-Lennard Struff, Yannick Hanfmann, Kevin Krawietz, and Tim Puetz.<\/p>\n Zverev, fresh from his ATP Finals group stage exit in Turin, is set to spearhead Germany’s quarter-final clash against Argentina in the Davis Cup on Thursday. Despite his reservations about the tournament’s current format, the world No. 3 insists he’s here for the team.<\/p>\n He elaborated: “I’m very happy to be with this team. I said it before. The only reason I’m here is because of this team. I still say, and I will keep saying, that I prefer the old format of the Davis Cup. I always said it and I will continue saying it. I think it was history. I think it was a big part of playing the home and away matches.<\/p>\n “I also love this team. I understand everybody’s not getting younger. We all want to have success together. We only have a couple more years left to do that within this formation. This is why I’m here. I truly believe that we have a great team. I truly believe we have a team that we can win this thing with. I’m looking forward to competing together with these guys.”<\/p>\n Should Germany triumph in their quarter-final match, they’ll either face Spain or Czechia in the semi-finals. France, Belgium, Italy, and Austria are also in the running for the trophy, fondly referred to as the ‘Salad Bowl’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite criticizing the current format of the Davis Cup Finals as an “exhibition”, world No. 3 Alexander Zverev…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[6774,49,48,82,593,1706],"class_list":{"0":"post-292867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-alexander-zverev","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-tennis-section"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292867","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=292867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}