Davis Cup

Davis Cup, international team competition for men's tennis, held annually. The team that wins the competition takes possession of a large silver cup for one year. The cup was donated in 1900 by the competition's namesake, Dwight Filley Davis, who was then a student at Harvard University and who later became an American statesman.

Each year in the Davis Cup, 16 nations form what is called the World Group, made up of teams that have qualified through regional play or by rankings and past success. These nations are matched up against one another in four rounds of single-elimination contests. These contests are called ties, and within the contests each match is called a rubber. In World Group play, ties consist of four singles matches and one doubles match, scheduled over three days. All matches are the best three-out-of-five sets.

When the competition started in 1900, only teams from the United States and Great Britain played for the trophy. By the late 1990s more than 120 national teams were involved in Davis Cup play. Two of the most successful Davis Cup nations are the United States, which dominated the competition in the 1920s, 1940s, 1970s, and 1990s, and Australia, which won 15 of the 18 Davis Cup titles played from 1950 to 1967. The Davis Cup is administered by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), which also runs the women’s equivalent, the Fed Cup.