Team spectacle without King Roger: does the Laver Cup make sense without Federer?

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Naturally. After all, Federer and his management invented the event. A year ago, he made his final appearance as a player at the Laver Cup when he once again played doubles alongside Rafael Nadal. Finally, the iconic photo was taken of Federer and Nadal holding hands and crying. Now he will of course be present again at the event in Vancouver.

The model is the Ryder Cup in golf, where the US plays a team competition against Europe. In the tennis version, Team Europe plays against the rest of the world, each team has six players, the match is played from Friday to Sunday and this year the event is held at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver. The points system is intended to ensure that anything can happen until the end: a win on Friday gives you one point, on Saturday you get two points and on Sunday you get three points.

Andrej Rublew, Casper Ruud, Hubert Hurkacz, Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, Arthur Fils and Gaël Monfils will compete for Europe, while Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe, Tommy Paul, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Ben Shelton and Francisco Cherundolo will compete for the world. Astute observers note: Team Europe is missing the two best players in the world, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner is also not playing and Rafael Nadal is missing due to injury.

The proven duo of John McEnroe (World) and Björn Borg (Europe) are also on the coaching benches this year. How long will this be the case? “Maybe one day I will be team captain,” Federer said when asked about it in Vancouver. “There are no plans in that direction at the moment, but that could be very nice.”

If you ask the maestro himself, the Laver Cup is here to stay. “He has exceeded expectations,” he says about the previous editions since 2017. But for the Swiss it goes beyond the sporting aspect. “You create memories for kids and their parents that they can look back on and say, look, I remember that time the Laver Cup was in Vancouver that inspired you to pick up a tennis racket or train harder.” Critics counter that the competition becomes meaningless without the best players in the world. Especially because the format with different points on different days has a disruptive effect on the sport. (e.g.)

Source : Blick