Stars Federer, Nadal Assemble In Geneva For 3rd Laver Cup

Would Laver Cup get sponsors once Federer retires ? Unlike the Ryder Cup that started in 1927 and was a novel idea at that time without requiring any star power to develop interest among the public, Laver Cup today sounds more like a Federer initiative at this point. May be this will change in the future, but I do have my doubts about this.

September 20th, 2019 at 5:00 am

It’s pretty messy, suddenly we have three team events in the space of few months, Laver Cup (privately owned and co-owned by 38 years old), Davis Cup (privately owned by Kosmos with Gerard Pique in charge) and ATP cup (I guess owned by ATP).
ATP cup is played in 3-12 January in Perth, Brisbane and Sudney, AO was moved one week later becaouse of ATP cup which is heavily backed by the likes of Rafter, Hewitt, Newcombe.
Fight for survival, let’s wait and see, meanwhile I am hoping Serbia will make QF so I can watch them i Sydney, they play group stage in Brisbane (Nole and Duci).

September 20th, 2019 at 6:27 am

^^^
Hopman cup, Brisbane international (man side) and Sydney International (man side) have been ceased to exist because of ATP Cup.
All top 10 players confirmed participation in ATP Cup.

September 20th, 2019 at 6:48 am

ATP Cup, nicely explained (formats, teams, points, price money etc), including official draw for 2020:

https://youtu.be/y80eRNgX30A

September 20th, 2019 at 6:59 am

@Patson – I think Laver Cup would stay popular after Fed retires. He may stop playing one day but would still have a hand in it and the sponsors will follow.

September 20th, 2019 at 11:18 am

Agree RZ. It is a very popular venue and format. Fed more than likely will continue to be involved after retirement.

September 20th, 2019 at 4:38 pm

My opinion, not that it matters, is that first collateral damage will be DC and Gerard Pique, than it will be fight between LC and ATP cup, advantage ATP Cup.

Owned by players, well planned and executed on a big scale, right time and place to play it (before GS in the country of GS tournament so the players can get adjusted to weather one week prior GS), good price money, ATP points, tennis facilities and conditions for playing next to none, big arenas with roofs in all three cities, massive support by entire nation (they killed their own three tournaments in order to stage this), massive support by financial powerhouses Perth, Sydney and Brisbane and their states, during school holidays, attendance guaranteed, it’ll be true tennis festival all over the nation.

That’s only warm up, werk after in Melbourne we have big one, GS with the biggest attendance of all four year after year and it only gets better each year.

I love January :)

September 20th, 2019 at 8:53 pm

This is how Nole’s recovery going in the mountains of Serbia, digging potatoes, getting on the back of Ferguson tractor with son and father, though he wasn’t happy being filmed, he told the dude “If you don’t want to help (carrying potato bags) just go away”, well Nole, bad luck, you are public person.
He is using good shoulder to carry potato bags;)

https://youtu.be/emlT8l1bjJM

September 20th, 2019 at 11:08 pm

Awesome team – Federer and Nadal coaching Fognini, with that temper, cannot be easy.
Fognini negative but Rog and Rafa kept at it – be positive, come on, you can do it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtT1dB4u_W8

September 21st, 2019 at 1:55 am

The venue for the Laver Cup is different each year, it’s not going to be stuck in Geneva!

September 21st, 2019 at 8:09 am

Wog Boy 20-9-11:08

How many potatoes, big and small, were hurt or killed in the making of this video? Plants have rights and feelings, too! :0

Odds you would see Fed or Rafa picking up and hauling potatoes in their off time? Not too likely. The Chinese might have suggested it was good for Li Na and Yao Ming to show their solidarity with the masses by assisting peasants harvesting sweet potatoes the same way in the fields, or gathering rice from paddy muck.

September 21st, 2019 at 10:38 pm

With Novak, it is just his way of doing recovery cross training. Stoop, pluck, twist and strengthen the core, lift. Repeat 1,000 times.
Japan Open is starting Sept 30th. Hope he plays.
Rafa’s big date is Oct 19. Good Nadal is out doing Laver/Fed Cup before that.

September 21st, 2019 at 10:45 pm

WB,

Thank you for sharing the video. Much better carring potatos, than wasting time on Marbella beaches. 🙂

Just to add, Nole will equal Lendl tomorrow with 270 weeks as Nr. 1 and surpass him next week, when he will hopefully play in Tokyo.

September 22nd, 2019 at 2:50 am

*potatoes

September 22nd, 2019 at 2:51 am

BP,
My pleasure and agree about Marbella.
The best memories out of this potato exercise will carry little Stefan, being with father, grandfather high in the mountains and jumping with them on Ferguson tractor for the ride.
My best memories from my childhood are the same, when my parents wanted to get rid of us during summer holidays and offloading us to our grandparents on working farm. You don’t know who was happier, grandparents for having grandkids or us, city slickers being able to live snd “work” on farm with real animals.
It was much the same attitude as on this video (over 1000m) and the only thing you really could grow was potato and tobacco.
My grandfather use to wake up 4am and go to fields, he didn’t have tractor in those days, nor horses, but he had bullock cart and he use to wrap me in sheep skins early in the morning and lay me at the back of the bullock cart so I could continue sleeping until we reach fields which were not so close to the house. I still can smell those warm sheep skins and cold morning sunrises at the back of bullock cart, nothing can replace those memories, not even after so many years and I am at the autumn of my life.
Nothing will replace those memories for Stefan, he is such a lucky kid, these potato digging worth more for Stefan, Novak and Srdjan than anything else, particularly playing tennis in fancy Geneva;)

September 22nd, 2019 at 4:51 am

^^^
“VP”

September 22nd, 2019 at 4:52 am

WB,

I know the feeling, have also great memories from my childhood, when spending summer holidays at my grand parents.

CF1,

Would be so also sometyhing to see Serena picking cotton or General Motors’ employees learning to work in Fuyao’s factory in Dayton/Ohio 😁

September 22nd, 2019 at 5:32 am

Picking cotton is mostly mechanical these days, and before that was considered a great job for illegals – bonuses not much stoop labor. (Mentioning Serena? Not in the US these days where associating any black person living or dead with picking cotton is Raaaayyyycisss!)

Farm work is tough. I hated hay bailing. Nowdays, I get a call about once every 5 years from an orchard/truck farmer I know. When the tomatoes get frost burned. You have two days to pick them or the burned areas ferment and mold and it’s a total loss. A solid day of doing nothing but tossing tomatoes into the back of your truck or tractor-towed bins. If truck you rake them out of your truck into a bin by a crane which loads them into a washer then on belt to a bin feeding a huge grinder. Then a gal on a ball valve shuts the grinder off when a 650 liter tote bin is full, tote bins are trucked to a packing place and if too many come in at once, to large refrigerated tanks.

September 23rd, 2019 at 1:01 am

CF1,

Good point, there is an overreaction with avoiding word cotton in association with black people. We cannot hide and deny history.
Come on, we have many Eastern Europeans picking strawberries and other fruits or vegetables in Western Europe. Agriculture will never die.

Sometimes I think I would be healthier and happier working at a farm than working with SAP, Excel, Power Point in an office…

September 23rd, 2019 at 2:01 pm

VP – There is huge over reaction to many things that leads to the Cultural Marxists in media and left leaning parties to enforce PC, twitter mobs demands. And absolutely deny history. That believe it or not, was a prime reason I voted for Trump and why Europe and Australia and Canada (ignore blackface Trudeau) are moving rightwards – they want their history and their “truth” as they see it, preserved.

Presently – cotton= plantations and slavery, associate a black person with cotton and you are calling them a slave. That mentality. Which gets hilarious when a black engineer I know shows his grand-dad and dad in straw hats smiling in front of a gigantic pile of cotton 3 times taller than them in S Carolina. The thing is, it is not demeaning because it is THEIR cotton (long fiber sea island cotton). They grow rice, too. Grand dad is a multimillionaire from his many acres. I’d be smiling, too!

And yes, I think farming is more satisfying than many jobs, and would be an enormous relief and growing experience for cube dwellers wanting it. But is is darn hard work and there is monotony in some key tasks. What would be ideal is if jobs were set up so you worked 9 months the equivalent of at least 40 hours a week, had a month off, and then 2 months to spend working farms, animal husbandry niches to lower food cost for the masses, or doing environmental cleanup, senior care, etc. Automation and AI are poised to eliminate a slew of jobs, so we will have the idle manpower capacity to do those “service to mankind” things very shortly.

Djokovic is living the farming dream weeks if not 2 months, why not the rest of us??

That day could be coming!

I almost put this in off topics but no tennis going on for a week more – and I am waiting, now stoked to see not just Novak, but Andy play again and to see how healthy they are. See if Novak can stave off Rafa as year end #1 (I think not, but who knows?) And a cheer is in order for Djokovic passing Connors and Lendl in weeks @ number 1 – with the whole time he has played Rafa and Fed were around, and Andy, and quality players like Stan. It just makes that 270 weeks an even bigger acomplishment!

September 23rd, 2019 at 5:18 pm