Laver Cup: Team Europe Wins Fourth Straight Title

Technically, the Laver Cup is an exhibition. It offers no ranking points even though it is a sanctioned ATP Tour event.

But the captains and the players have never treated it as an exhibition, and Team World’s failure to compete in Boston was certainly not linked to a failure to care. Their expressions were often anguished and their body language often tense as they lost critical point after critical point, usually in the match tiebreakers that substitute for third sets.

“It’s not an exhibition,” Opelka said. “If this was an exhibition, it would not have been 14-1. I can guarantee you that.”

Opelka, a towering and bearded player at 6-foot-11 who lost both his matches in his Laver Cup debut, confessed that he had been skeptical until he experienced the event himself this year.

“It looked too good to be true,” he said of the close finishes in 2017, 2018 and 2019. “And then I got here, and the way Johnny Mac started speaking about it changed everything. He’s a true legend. That was priceless being able to spend time with him.”

The Laver Cup’s capacity to bring together tennis’s past and present stars for meaningful exchanges is one of its strengths. So is its format, in which victories are worth one point on the first day, two points on the second and three points on the third. That was intended to prevent a meaningless final day. But while four matches were scheduled on Sunday, Europe clinched victory after only one, with Zverev and Rublev defeating Opelka and Shapovalov, 6-2, 6-7 (4), 10-3. It was yet another close match that went Europe’s way. It was also a potentially edgy one.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/sports/tennis/laver-cup-europe-world.html