This Is One Cup That Definitely Runneth Over

Could Switzerland win the Davis Cup? This is the question America was asking. Anywhere you turned, everywhere you went, this was what America’s sports fans wanted to know. African-American, Anglo-American, Asian-American, Pan-American, Franco-American, Arctic-American, Iraqi-American, anybody and everybody, all they ever wanted to talk about was the same damn thing, Swiss tennis.

I went to a bar in Santa Ana, a spa in Santa Monica and a park in Santa Barbara. I eavesdropped on conversations. The buzz never stopped. “Do you think Switzerland will win?”

I went to a book store in Long Beach, a record store in Redondo Beach and a health-food store in Pismo Beach. I heard the exact same thing. “This might be the best Swiss Davis Cup team ever!”

I went to a beauty parlor in Anaheim Hills, an ice cream parlor in Woodland Hills and a tattoo parlor in Beverly Hills. Nothing changed. “I heard Dimitri Sturdza replaced Roland Stadler as Switzerland’s team captain!”

It’s was like a fever.

It was the first question on every radio call-in show. I hear Larry King is inviting the entire Swiss team into the studio. ESPN “SportsCenter” didn’t even bother reporting those trivial NFL and NBA scores until first they let us know how Coach Jakob Hlasek’s guys were doing down there in Ft. Worth, which, as most of you know, is home to literally hundreds of Swiss-American refugees.

The results of these Davis Cup finals have dominated the news worldwide for days and days. Most of the major networks preempted regular programming. Jim Lampley was signed to host a special edition of NBC-TV’s “Ovaltine Scoreboard.” George Bush, in one of his last acts as President, threw out the first fuzzy yellow ball. Tom Arnold sang the national anthem.

As for myself, I am so mad at my cheap so-and-so of a boss, I am hardly speaking to him. How many sportswriters from his paper did he assign to the Davis Cup finals? One! I mean, this is a guy who sends two sportswriters to the national Scrabble playoffs and he only sends one to the urgent Page 1 story happening down there in Ft. Worth? Man, we had this many writers at the opening of the bighorn sheep season.

This is Switzerland we’re talking about here! Do you think this is something that happens every day, the Swiss competing for the championship in something that does not involve snow? Particularly with all the Swiss-bashing that goes on in the world today, you would think we would go out of our way to give these people a break. Switzerland playing for a major sports championship is like Kmart playing in the Paris fashion finals.

The number of people following this year’s Davis Cup was staggering, even just the number in California towns beginning with the word San. Only yesterday, I was speaking to a kid from Los Angeles who was wearing his “Davis Cup” cap backward. When I asked him if the “Prince” T-shirt he was wearing was in honor of the singer, he said: “No, fool. The racket .”

When I was his age, if somebody had asked me what I thought of the Davis Cup, I would have said: “Who’s this Davis and why’s he got a cup?” Yet as I grow older, I realize that basketball, baseball and soccer all must take a back-seat to Davis Cup tennis, which always draws TV ratings right up there with the most popular programs, like TBS’s politically incorrect “Hogan’s Heroes” reruns and SportsChannel’s much-discussed “The Earle Bruce Show.”

For those few out there in the reading audience who do not follow Davis Cup tennis as a rule (and I pity thee), perhaps this would be a swell opportunity for me to explain some of the rules and traditions that have made the Davis Cup, well, let’s be honest, America’s Tournament.

1. The Davis Cup never ends. Ten minutes after the finals of this year’s Davis Cup, next year’s Davis Cup begins. Brackets are drawn up to include 247 different places, including Pago Pago, Trinidad & Tobago, Togo, Tonga and I think possibly the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. An elimination tournament takes 12 months, climaxing with the finals, and commencing anew 10 minutes thereafter, after a brief break to drink some Gatorade and smoke a Virginia Slim.

2. No women are allowed. Whoever this Davis is, apparently he is a man. Women can’t drink out of this cup. They are told: “Go find your own Cup.” Somebody named Wightman let women play for a cup, and there’s something called the Federation Cup, but these are like espresso cups compared to those great big Davis mugs.

3. If you play for your country in the Davis Cup, you can use this to excuse all other shameful behavior that might have embarrassed your country during any other tournament. All you have to do is win the tournament, wave your country’s flag and show people that you might not always behave well, but you sure do mean well.

Well, my TV was on 24 hours a day. I was pumped. I got particularly excited about the big Davis Cup between-sets show. This year it starred Michael Jackson in a special tribute to Swiss athletes around the world. He moonwalked and yodeled at the same time, then smashed a Volvo with a crowbar. Oh, and be sure to order your “Greatest Service Breaks of Davis Cup History” video, only $49.95.