A long, proud Irish tradition

The cover painting portrays a well-heeled young fellow decked out in white flannel. This is Dwight Davis, Harvard student and tennis player. His two companions, Malcolm Whitman looking fashionably distracted and the more earnest Holcombe Ward, complete the composition on the front sleeve of the 1999 Davis Cup Media Guide. Belted trousers and rolled up sleeves. Young patricians, history makers.

This year the competition Dwight Davis initiated has turned its 100th page. "A family saga spanning several generations and two World Wars" the blurb might run.

From that snapshot of blue-blooded amateurism to the professional juggernaut that moves around the globe as the current Davis Cup, tennis has developed a competition that has had exceptional growth, particularly since 1973 when nations were allowed to select their top professional players to represent them.

The sport claims the Davis Cup is the largest annual international sporting event in the world today with equal male and female interest. While that may not be immediately obvious in Ireland because of our current modest standing in the competition, Irish tennis has been significantly represented from the beginning.

When Davis issued his calling at Boston's Longwood Cricket Club, only Great Britain answered the challenge. But even then Irish players competed with distinction. Remembering that John Pius Boland struck tennis gold for Ireland at the inaugural Athens Olympic Games before the turn of the century, there were a number of top players in circulation.

Josh Pim and James Cecil Parke from Clones were both Davis Cup winners in that era. An Irish team entered the competition in its own right in 1923, and in 1924 Ireland hosted a match against France, who then had the great Rene Lacoste as their number one player.

Since then all of the world's top players have scrambled to represent their countries. Fred Perry, Rod Laver, Arthur Ashe, John McEnroe, Boris Becker, Andre Agassi as well as the best of the Irish.

Eoin Collins and Owen Casey both had 10-year stints as Davis Cup players between 1988 and 1997. Casey, who is again on the team this weekend, played his first representative match on grass at Mount Pleasant. The Dubliner is also a triple Olympian, having played at Seoul in 1988, Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996.

Michael Hickey, another loyal servant to the game from 1962-78 was also the non-playing Irish team captain throughout Ireland's most watched moments in the competition in 1983.

While those heady days of World Group competition are over, Hickey provided the soothing words of comfort to Matt Doyle and Sean Sorenson when they took on the might of a USA team containing John McEnroe, Peter Fleming and Eliott Teltscher at the RDS. No doubt he also dealt with the disappointment of Peter Minnis, who should not be air-brushed out of history simply because he didn't get on to court.

Both Doyle and Sorensen also had long records, Doyle from 1981-88 and Sorensen from 1976-86.

Currently an experimental arena for the abolition of the "let" and the "no ad" system, the Davis Cup, along with the Federation Cup for women, is Ireland's main access point to international tennis along with a record 129 other nations.