Team Europe reclaimed their Laver Cup title with a dominant 13-5 victory against Team World on the final day of competition at the O2 Arena.
The contest had been finely poised after two days, with Team Europe holding a narrow 7-5 lead at the start of the day. With each match worth three points on Sunday, Europe needed two wins from the four remaining matches to win. They clinched their victory efficiently.
Jakub Mensik and Flavio Cobolli opened the day with a 7-5, 6-3 win against Alex de Minaur and Taylor Fritz before Alexander Zverev, the recent French and US Open champion, closed out the series with a 7-6 (3), 6-3 win against Learner Tien.
This was a logical result. The world No 2, Alexander Zverev, the No 3, Carlos Alcaraz, and the No 7, Flavio Cobolli, are all ranked more highly than Team World’s highest‑ranked players, De Minaur and Fritz, and there is just much more depth in a continent that has won the past 67 men’s grand slam titles. The last non-European player to win a men’s grand slam title was Argentina’s Juan Martín del Potro at the 2009 US Open.
This appeared to be another successful edition of the event on its return to London four years after Roger Federer retired from tennis here. There were packed crowds throughout the weekend, the matches were competitive even though the extremely slow courts did not always make for quality tennis. The interactions between the Team World captain, Andre Agassi, and his group of players were extremely entertaining.
Agassi closed off his second term with one more memorable moment, using his speech during the trophy ceremony as an opportunity to roast Zverev, essentially portraying him as a petulant whiner: “Congratulations Sascha, crazy year, seeing you win for the first time, I know how important that was for you.
“It was important to me because I could start listening to your press conferences again. You weren’t like, ‘[mimicking crying] why do I always lose? I’m third-best in the world, I suck. But then you win and it’s like: ‘I’m only one slam champion and I gotta do it again.’”
However, the defining and most revealing moment of this year’s event came on Saturday. A few hours after Zverev lost his first singles match against De Minaur from match point up, Alcaraz faced two match points against Fritz deep in their final-set tiebreak.
At 10-11, he responded with a successful drop shot and lob combination, a nuclear forehand and then another winning drop shot to clinch the final three points of the match. Enamoured with his creativity and boldness, the O2 Arena crowd instantly erupted with deafening cheers.
This event was built on the star power of the likes of Federer, Rafael Nadal and then later Novak Djokovic. Since that group of players, Alcaraz is the only player on the ATP who generates this kind of fervour and attention. He clearly enjoys this event and will surely look to compete in future editions of the Laver Cup, but it would look like a completely different event without him.
