At last, the closing week of another breathless tennis season began on Tuesday afternoon in Málaga with the Davis Cup finals. Milos Raonic of Canada, the defending champions, and Finland’s Patrick Kaukovalta stepped out on to the vast Palacio de los Deportes to a warm welcome from a healthy audience for the first quarter-final tie.
Those positive scenes, though, belie a year of chaos for the Davis Cup. Four years since Kosmos, the investment company co-founded by Gerard Piqué, and the International Tennis Federation (ITF) reformed the event, it remains to be seen if one of the world’s biggest annual team sporting competitions can finally figure itself out.
