Murray’s GB dominance shows Davis Cup not a team competition

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  • No team spirit: Andy Murray's Great Britain.

    When Lionel Messi was forced off 10 minutes into a league game in September, it was unlikely to have given rise to anything but consternation for everyone associated with FC Barcelona.

    News that he was to miss eight weeks with a ligament injury would have been more worrying still. The Argentine is, after all, the club’s best player by some distance.

    Even the gloomiest pessimist among Barcelona’s legions of fans, however, would not say Messi’s absence would spell disaster for the team.

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    True, Messi is the sort of once-in-a-generation genius whom any side in the world would treasure, but football is a team game, and the 28-year old plays in a team that boasts a wealth of other talent.

    Even without this diminutive wizard, Barcelona are one of the world’s best teams.

    Tennis, on the other hand, is very much an individual sport, with one notable exception.

    The Davis Cup, a solitary team competition in a solo game, has been around since 1900, with players from all corners of the world joining forces to represent their country, often setting aside fierce personal differences.

    Victory is indicative of the good health of the sport in a particular nation.

    Throughout the past century, geographical dominance in the Davis Cup has accurately reflected the depth and quality of talent available to respective countries.

    France’s six consecutive Cup wins from 1927-32 came in a period when they had the legendary ‘Four Musketeers’ at their disposal – Jean Borotra, Heni Cochet, René Lacoste and Jacques Brugnon turning the global competition into a French fortress.

    Australia won the event 15 times from a possible 18 between 1950 and 1967, helped immeasurably by the mastery and guile of Roy Emerson, John Newcombe, and perhaps the greatest of them all, Rod Laver.

    Likewise, it is no coincidence that the Americans had a stranglehold on the tournament when they could field the likes of Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, John McEnroe and Pete Sampras on the same team.

    The theme of the best team winning the Cup runs strong right through the fabric of its history. It was also, surely, the point of its existence in the first place.

    September 18, 2014 was an important day for all sorts of reasons, particularly one that has acquired greater contextual significance this year.

    It was the day of Scotland’s independence referendum, and if the trivialities of the currency, debt repayment and devolution are set aside, the far more important consequence of a ‘Yes’ vote would have been the absence of the British team in the Davis Cup final this year, and their certain relegation from the World Group in September. For Andy Murray, as sometimes the media make it hard to forget, is Scottish.

    Is the state of British tennis sans Murray (remember, that would have rendered his brother Jamie ineligible too) really that bleak?

    The answer becomes obvious with one glance at the ATP rankings page. Without a fellow Brit ranked in the Top 100, the world No. 3 has single-handedly dragged his country to the final of the Davis Cup; without him, they wouldn’t even belong (and indeed, didn’t for many years before his arrival) in the top tier.

    Britain’s run to the final has seen them conquer the United States, France and Australia, all countries that possess significantly more strength in depth than the current finalists.

    James Ward’s triumph over John Isner is the only rubber, singles or doubles, that Britain have won without Murray’s involvement over the course of the entire tournament this year.

    Wins in two singles and one doubles rubber (with his brother Jamie) in each of the last two ties have seen the indefatigable Scot somehow haul his team to the final against Belgium in Ghent.

    Far be it for me to knock the two-time Slam champion for playing within the rules and achieving this monumental feat. If Murray (I mean, ahem, Great Britain) wins the final, it is an accomplishment as admirable as any Grand Slam he will ever lay his hands on, and arguably the most impressive solo effort in the Cup’s storied history.

    But- and this is an important point- it tells us nothing about the strength of British tennis, merely highlighting what we already know, that Andy Murray is a heck of a tennis player.

    It would be a bit like allowing AB de Villiers to bat in every position from 1 to 11 and conclude that the future of South African batting looks rosy.

    As physiques and fitness levels of the modern tennis player continue to stretch the boundaries of what was only recently thought barely possible, we might see more and more of these ‘solo runs’ to Davis Cup glory.

    Roger Federer might have pushed himself to do it one year for Switzerland before Wawrinka’s surge to tennis’s elite made his task significantly easier last season.

    It might be a shade reactionary to limit players’ involvement to one singles rubber per tie, but the current rules allowing a competitor to take part in three rubbers effectively means that one world class individual can bag a team event.

    It does not feel right, on one level, simply because it is the antithesis of what the Davis Cup is meant to be.

    Australia, France and Spain, for example, have three of the best teams in the world right now, with a handful of players in the Top 50.

    In a genuine team competition, it is hard to see them losing to the current British side, and yet it is Leon Smith’s men who find themselves in November’s showpiece final. A British victory will do nothing to change any perceptions, either.

    Andy Murray is undoubtedly a great British player, but, in tennis terms at least, the country of Great Britain may not use that adjective for itself just yet.       

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