Next Davis Cup Site: Remember the Alamo(Dome)?

Joe Samuel Starnes — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:22:52 +0000

Andy Roddick’s home state of Texas is the leading contender for hosting the upcoming Davis Cup match that will bring Roger Federer to the U.S. in early March. News reports cite San Antonio, Las Vegas, Birmingham, Ala., and Greenville, S.C. as potential host cities. Andy Roddick’s older brother, Lawrence, a San Antonio resident, is heading up the move to play the matches in the cavernous Alamadome. “Our goal is to set the world record to see a tennis match previoulsy held by the Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs match,” Lawrence Roddick wrote on this blog. “The planned venue is the Alamodome where the seating capacity will be 35,000.”

The USTA should take his suggestion, and do something more dramatic than what it has done with its previous choices of small, second-rate areas in Winston-Salem and Portland for previous home matches. It also would be a way to honor Andy Roddick, as loyal and committed a Davis Cup participant as the American team has ever had. He lives just up the road in Austin, and this would be a home court advantage he and James Blake could use against Federer. I didn’t think of the Alamodome when I wrote my spiel on suggested ideas, but it makes more sense than an outdoor football field and would be rowdy spectacle that the American Davis Cup match desperately needs.

The USTA is set to announce the site on Dec. 15, and according to one of the world’s best tennis writers, L. Jon Wertheim, it looks good for San Antonio. He wrote last week on his Tennis Mailbag on SI.com: “With all due respect to the good folks of Alabama and South Carolina, you have to think San Antonio is the best option. You have a huge arena — the Alamodome — in a major city, barely an hour from the home base of the top American player. I was told that, potentially, this could be the largest crowd ever to attend a sanctioned match in the U.S. When Federer signed on to play Davis Cup in 2009, we suspect he didn’t envision himself performing before 25,000 Texans!”

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Next Davis Cup Site: Remember the Alamo(Dome)?