Although the Laver Cup title returns to Team Europe in 2024, it is still clear that they will continue to have a very difficult tournament. Why is that?
The 2024 Laver Cup will be the 7th edition of the tournament. When Team Europe wins, it will be their 5th title. A huge leap over Team World.
However, it should be noted that 4/5 of their wins came in the first 4 rounds of the tournament, with the presence of big names.
In fact, right from the beginning, the Laver Cup created a sense of difference in skill level, because most European players were in the Top 10, while the World Team rarely had any.
Back in 2017, the first tournament, the European team had Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Alexander Zverev, Marin Cilic, Dominic Thiem in the Top 10, the world team had no one. That year, Frances Tiafoe, who also participated in this year's tournament, ranked 72 - the lowest among the players.
In 2018, Nadal did not participate, so the European team had Novak Djokovic to replace him. Tiafoe still ranked last among 12 players, at 40th place.
In 2018, Nadal returned when Djokovic was absent, along with Thiem, Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas. On the world team side, there was even Jack Sock ranked… 210th in the world.
In 2020, the tournament was not held due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, although there were no Big Three players, all 6 European players were in the Top 10. In addition to Tsitsipas and Zverev, there were also Daniil Medvedev (2), Andrey Rublev (5), Mattel Berettini (7), and Casper Ruud (10).
The highest on the opposite side is Felix Auger-Aliassime (11) and the lowest is Nick Kyrgios (95).
That was 4 seasons of European team victory, until 2022, although Federer and Nadal were on the list, in reality they only played 1 doubles match and then retired after the Swiss "Express Train" announced his retirement.
That year, there was Djokovic in the European team but the world team won.
2023 is the first and only time to date that the World team has been rated higher. They won convincingly with a score of 13 - 2, the European team only won 1 single match of Ruud on the 2nd day (2 points).
This year, the European team was stronger, but in the end, it was mostly disappointing. While the Laver Cup homepage said “Strategy and unity were the foundations of the European team’s victory,” commentators added that “the only strategy was Carlos Alcaraz.”
In fact, Alcaraz won 3 out of 4 matches he participated in, bringing home 8 of the total 13 points of the European team. Zverev brought home 3 points in the singles match on the last day, Tsitsipas and Grigor Dimitrov won 2 singles matches but on the first day so only had 2 points.
Medvedev lost both singles matches and did not play doubles.
The competition format is also a part that makes it difficult for European players. Either they start the match slowly, or they may still be… confused with the super tie-break series (Medvedev lost both).
One thing that can be seen is that European players do not often play doubles, so they lose more. Statistics show that, in the history of the tournament, the European team has only won 6 doubles matches (13 points), less than 10% of the total 42 matches.
In contrast, the world team won 15 doubles matches out of 34. It was a pity that the number of doubles matches was only 3 in 3 days of competition, with the maximum points that could be won being 6 (if winning all 3).
