It is never the best advertisement for a sport when most of its top players to not participate.
That is where things stand in tennis with the 2010 Davis Cup competition, which begins the weekend of March 5-7 and features World Group action in eight locations. Five of the top seven players in the world will not be representing their countries.
Those numbers were finalized with news this week that Rafael Nadal will miss defending champion Spain's opening round against Switzerland at home in Logrono. It will be staged in the Plaza de Toros de la Ribera, a retractable-roof, bullring stadium opened in 2001, which is notable for having a design that has been likened to a hamburger.
The seating for tennis is 10,500 and originally there were hopes that the two greatest players of the modern era, Nadal and Roger Federer, would be present to lead their respective countries on the specially installed red-clay court.
Now neither will be there. Nadal because he says he is not quite ready after injuring his right knee at the Australian Open, although he remains optimistic he will be able to defend his title in Indian Wells, Calif., beginning less than a week later.
As for Federer, he has skipped the opening round every year since 2004, preferring instead to play the Playoff round in September in order to preserve Switzerland's spot in the elite 16-nation World Group for the following year.
Here is the list of top-seven players and their status: 1. Federer (not playing) 2. Novak Djokovic (playing) 3. Nadal (not playing) 4. Andy Murray (not playing) 5. Juan Martin del Potro (not playing) 6. Nikolay Davydenko (playing) and 7. Andy Roddick (not playing).
Murray and Roddick have basically withdrawn from the competition for the year. Murray played Davis Cup with a wrist injury the week following last year's US Open and then missed all of the month of October, losing a chance to earn valuable ranking points. The Brits have been relegated to Europe/Africa Group II in 2010 and will play their opening round in Vilnius against Lithuania.
Roddick, a long-time stalwart of the American team, was bothered by a knee problem last fall and decided that pulling out of Davis Cup could be a wise move, partly because potential changes of surface could be a problem for him. That would have been the case next month as the U.S. team is traveling to Belgrade to play Serbia and Djokovic indoors on red clay, less than a week before the start of the Masters Series event in Indian Wells on hard courts.
Argentina, which plays away in Sweden, will be without del Potro who has a wrist injury.
These days, it seems that the four Grand Slam events are the only times in the season when perfect attendance from the top stars is pretty well a guarantee. Even the eight Masters Series events, and their mandatory entry for the highest-ranked players, have had consistently better turnouts than Davis Cup.
Anyone who has seen Davis Cup matches understands that it can be the most spirited competition of the year - sometimes more, sometimes less intense than the Grand Slams.
But, as illustrated by all the absentees in this year's first round, it is a highly-flawed event.
And consider this: the 2010 first round begins on March 5. The last day of this year's final will on December 5 - exactly nine months to the day later.