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After years of head-scratching, the International Tennis Federation has come up with some new-look branding in the hope of revitalising the Davis Cup brand.
The venerable team competition is now appearing on posters as “the World Cup of tennis”, while a promotion entitled “Show Your Colours” is using each team’s flags as a rallying point for fans.
A desperate and underpowered attempt to regain a little of the cup’s lost limelight?
Time will tell, but let us not be too negative. This was already promising to be a good weekend for the competition before a ball had been hit.
For one thing, the return of Andy Murray and Great Britain to the world group has added significantly to its historical resonance.
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Their first-round tie against the US, which started on Friday night when Murray faced Donald Young at San Diego’s Petco Park, is a rematch of the first Davis Cup tie from Boston in 1900, which the hosts won 3-0.
The British team have underperformed for so long that a victory here would be their first in the world group since 1986.
And yet, only eight years before that, John Lloyd and Buster Mottram faced John McEnroe and his fellow Americans in another epic: the 1978 final at Palm Springs.
Perhaps it is jingoistic to suggest that the resurgence of Great Britain – which has been powered by some inspired selections by team captain Leon Smith and an array of strong doubles players – benefits the whole competition.
But everyone loves to beat the Brits, in any sport. It is just that, in tennis, those victories are slightly less easy to come by than they used to be.
Meanwhile, Switzerland’s attempt to land a first Davis Cup title has been boosted by Roger Federer’s decision to participate in the first match of the year.
Normally, Federer leaves Stan Wawrinka – the Australian Open champion – in charge and rides in at the last gasp to head off relegation in the September play-off.
This year, though, Federer seems to have been inspired by the possibility of actually winning the competition.
And it is hard to see who might stop the Swiss champions if both stay fit and available throughout the season.
Until yesterday, the last nation to combine two individual grand slam winners was Spain, which brought together Rafael Nadal and Juan Carlos Ferrero in 2005.
After Nadal came within a match of adding a 14th grand slam title to his tally in Australia a week ago, it is easy to see why Federer might want to shore up the only gap in his otherwise impeccable CV: the lack of a Davis Cup title (Nadal, by comparison, has four.)
Success in the final in 10 months’ time would certainly add another wrinkle to the ongoing “greatest of all time” debate.
But whatever Federer’s motivations, it was encouraging to see the most lauded figure in the sport return to the fray against Serbia on Friday, easing past Ilija Bozoljac in straight sets in Novi Sad.
The only shame is that he will not be playing Novak Djokovic on Sunday, for the world No2 has opted for a skiing trip to his childhood home of Kopaonik instead.
Here we see the chief difficulty of team competitions in men’s tennis.
For the best part of a decade, the sport’s narrative has revolved around the crunching collisions between the super-elite in the final stages of grand slams.
Yet when was the last time this happened in the Davis Cup?
The same problem applies to the proposed International Tennis Premier League, a plan to create star-studded teams based in four Asian cities, which is being assembled by former doubles champion Mahesh Bhupathi.
You could see Murray or Djokovic agreeing to hang out in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur for a couple of weeks in December; they would be doing warm-weather training somewhere else at that time of the year anyway.
But it is hard to see them clocking up any extra miles by making the journeys to away trips, which would forestall the tastiest match-ups.
The variety and passion of the Davis Cup make it an important cog in the calendar, even now. Y
et until the big names start to “show their colours” more often, the competition will continue to struggle for airtime.
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