Davis Cup 2018

Every serious sport has its own world-class competitions, where the best of the best regularly find out who is still worthy of champion title. Tennis, of course, is not exception.

In this sport there are enough tournaments - this is the World championship of Abu Dhabi, and AAMI Classic, and the Grand Slam - most prestigious among other tournaments... But a special place in the hearts of athletes and fans is the oldest championship, called the Davis Cup.

The Davis Cup takes a special place in the hearts of athletes, photo WEB

For the first time the struggle for the Silver salad bowl (this is what tennis players called the Davis cup) broke out in the distant 1900. Since then, every year athletes from 140 countries of the world go to the court in the hope of becoming its owners. For the whole history of the competition tennis players from 15 countries got it, among which twice was Russia. Until the early 2000s, the struggle was mainly between the United States, Australia and the UK, but every year to predict the outcome of the tournament is becoming more difficult.

For the first time the struggle for the Silver salad bowl broke out in 1900, photo WEB

The history of the Cup is romantic and full of ambition. Four Harvard students lit up with the idea of organizing a tennis competition in which athletes from all over the world could take part. The leader of the four was the son of a millionaire, a brilliant student and an unsurpassed tennis player Dwight Davis. He developed the concept, came up with the rules of the tournament and bought the Cup for his own money.

Salad bowl cost 700 dollars - an incredible amount for those times! But accustomed to do everything qualitatively, Davis ordered the most important tennis trophy at jewelers, strictly specify them to perform it out from pure silver. Perhaps, that is why today the Cup looks like it just left the workshop, rather than spent more than a hundred years traveling between bank safes and the houses of the best tennis players in the world. Only the height of the Salad bowl has changed from 33 centimeters to 110 - the number of stands with engraved champions names is growing, giving the trophy more and more historical value over and over again.

Dwight Davis and the Davis Tennis Center in the United States, photo © tennis-i.com

The tournament saw a lot of records and the birth of stars. There were enough amazing events on it . So, for example, in 1974 the victory in the competition went to athletes from South Africa, who never went to court. Their rivals from India were ordered by Gandhi to boycott the finals and simply gave Davis Cup to South Americans. By the way, the "sequence" of their victories in the Davis Cup has ended.

At the Cup in 2011, a record for the ball speed was born. Croat Ivo Karlovich passed a ball to American counterpart at a speed of more than 250 km/h. It's just a gift from heaven that there was no fan at the way of such a "projectile" ...

In 2011, Ivo Karlovich passed the ball at a speed of more than 250 km/h, photo WEB

However, the potential injury is not the only risk for the Davis Cup spectators. Once a match between a pair of Czechs and a duet of Swiss brought the entire sports world community to nervous exhaustion. The match lasted more than seven hours, during which 91 games were played - an absolute record for tennis matches.

Russian tennis players became owners of the Silver salad bowl twice, in 2002 and 2006. The history of the Russian participation in the tournament began in 1962, but despite the consistently decent game, for all these years, something was missing for getting the victory. At the current competitions, the quarterfinals which ended on April 8, Russia had high hopes, but the circumstances were different, and our athletes gave the right to fight for the Cup to the Australians.

The longest match in the pairs lasted more than 7 hours, photo WEB

Dwight Davis, the ideologist and organizer of competitions, in his youth dreamed that his championship would move tennis around the world and thousands of athletes would make the Salad bowl the goal of all life. And it happened. Already being seriously ill and waiting for death, Davis told Norman Brooks, who possessed the trophy that time: "Do not hold the goblet in Australia for a long time, because it is created for travel. If I could only guess what significance it will play in the world of tennis, I would certainly cast it out of gold ... ".

Victoria Romanova, Russia, Moscow

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