By Richard Pagliaro | Friday, November 14, 2025
Photo credit: Davis Cup/ITF Facebook
Davis Cup enjoyed a traditional homecoming this year.
Now, ATP execs and stars are advocating reconfiguring Davis Cup as a biennial event.
In the last two days, the world’s top two-ranked men—Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner—have both publicly said they’d prefer Davis Cup to be contested every other year rather than as an annual event.
The Davis Cup Final 8 is set for Tuesday, November 18th through Sunday, November 23rd in Bologna, Italy.
World No. 1 Alcaraz, who will lead Spain’s quest to capture its seventh Davis Cup—and first since 2019—says it’s time to change the format of the world’s longest-running annual team sporting competition from an annual event to once every two or three years.
“If I am honest with you, I think the Davis Cup is one of those tournaments that you’re not used to feel and play because you’re playing for your country, you’re playing with your teammates,” Alcaraz told the media in Turin. “It’s totally different. I think it’s one of the most privileged things you can do in our sport, representing your country.
“I agree that they got to do something in this event, because I think playing every year, I mean, it is not as good as it might be if you’re playing every two or three years. I think if the tournament is played like every two years or every three years, the players, the commitment of the players, it’s going to be even more because it’s unique, it’s different. You’re not able to play every year.”
World No. 2 Jannik Sinner, who led Italy to successive Davis Cup championships, opted out of this year’s Davis Cup Final 8.
Still, Sinner supports changing Davis Cup because he thinks an every other year format would result in more of the best players competing—and give fans of the finalists a better shot to see their nations play for the Cup.
“I think playing with this schedule, Davis Cup, it’s difficult that you have every year from every country the best players in the world,” Sinner told the media in Turin today. “What I would like, what I could see potentially in the future, is having Davis Cup throughout two years, so you can also set up the semifinals in the beginning of the year and the final in the end of the year somewhere.
“It’s also nice where you can choose, make the coin toss, whatever, and you play in this stadium, and you sell tickets. Like this, if you play in Bologna, there is the matchup Australia against U.S., of course there are going to be spectators. I’m not saying that. But in the same time, why not making it a real Davis Cup competition?”
Support from the world’s top two to change the Davis Cup format comes a couple of days after ATP Chairman and former ATP pro Andrea Gaudenzi advocated moving Davis Cup to a biennial event.
Gaudenzi cites three reasons supporting the change:
- Since Davis Cup bills itself as the World Cup of Tennis why not emulate a bit of FIFA World Cup (the soccer World Cup is staged once every four years) to build anticipation and give Davis Cup a greater spotlight.
- Changing the format, Gaudenzi asserts, would allow for the return of home-and-away semifinals and finals bringing the elite competition to cities that don’t have annual tennis events.
- A format change would give players a longer offseason in non-Davis Cup years.
“I do really love the Davis Cup. I think is an amazing event. I probably had the best matches in my career there,” Gaudenzi said. “I think it’s an incredible asset for tennis. We should all come together to try to make it the World Cup for tennis.
“I think the best product is the home and away. I think the atmosphere, I’ve played one Final in Milan, probably the best memory of my career, and where I’ve been playing in different places. You go to different countries. You go to cities where we don’t take tennis with the tour.”
Davis Cup returned to the home-and-away format in September. The host United States fell to Czechia in a tie staged in Delray Beach.
Alcaraz said he values Davis Cup as a vital competition, but asserts change is necessary because the season is simply too long.
“I really want to win the Davis Cup one day because for me it’s a really important, important tournament,” Alcaraz said. “Jannik has won it twice. I think Lorenzo once or twice, as well.
“For me, I would say it’s normal for them because the season has been so long. They might keep it to have one more week to recover, to do vacation, to do pre-season, which is understandable. It’s normal.
But I would say they got to do something about it to make the Davis Cup unique.”
You can argue that making Davis Cup a biennial event would not only destroy the tradition of the competition that began in 1900, but it would have the exact opposite impact of the ATP’s intention and become marginalized rather than popularized by such a change.
While it appears highly unlikely the ITF would consent to alter the tradition of annual Davis Cup competition, Gaudenzi says the game’s governing bodies should come together to make the change to condense the tennis calendar and to try to give Davis Cup maximum exposure.
“In the ideal world I think if Davis Cup could go home and away and over two years,” Gaudenzi said. “There is no World Cup in sport that happens every year, to my knowledge. First of all, I think it would be better for them, for the product, and also would create release a lot of pressure from the calendar.”
The 113th Davis Cup Final 8 dates for next week are here:
QUARTERFINAL 1 – France v Belgium
Tuesday November 18th – 16.00 (CET)
QUARTERFINAL 2 – Italy v Austria
Wednesday, November 19th – 16.00 (CET)
QUARTERFINAL 3 -Spain v Czechia
Thursday, November 20th – 10.00 (CET)
QUARTERFINAL 4 – Argentina v Germany
Thursday, November 20th – 17.00 (CET)
SEMIFINAL 1 (QF1 v QF2)
Friday, November 21st – 16.00 (CET)
SEMIFINAL 2 (QF3 v QF4)
Saturday, November 22nd – 12.00 (CET)
FINAL
Sunday, November 23rd – 15.00 (CET)
