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The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's tennis. It is run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and is contested annually between teams from competing countries in a knock-out format. It is described by the organisers as the "World Cup of Tennis", and the winners are referred to as the World Champion team.〔()〕 The competition began in 1900 as a challenge between Great Britain and the United States. By 2015, 126 nations entered teams into the competition. The most successful countries over the history of the tournament are the United States (winning 32 tournaments and finishing as runners-up 29 times) and Australia (winning 28 times, including four occasions with New Zealand as Australasia, and finishing as runners-up 19 times). The present champions are Great Britain who beat Belgium to win the title for the 10th time in 2015. It was Great Britain's first title in 79 years, and first in the open era. The win moved Great Britain to third on the all time winners list. The women's equivalent of the Davis Cup is the Fed Cup. Australia, the Czech Republic, and the United States are the only countries to have held both Davis Cup and Fed Cup titles in the same year. The Hopman Cup, a third competition for mixed teams, carries less prestige, but is a popular curtain raiser to the tennis season. ==History== The tournament was conceived in 1899 by four members of the Harvard University tennis team who wished to challenge the British to a tennis competition. Once their respective lawn tennis associations agreed, one of the four Harvard players, Dwight F. Davis, designed a tournament format and ordered an appropriate sterling silver trophy from Shreve, Crump & Low, purchasing it from his own funds for about $1,000. They in turn commissioned a classically-styled design from William B. Durgin's of Concord, New Hampshire, crafted by the Englishman Rowland Rhodes.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title= Davis Cup Grows by a Third )〕 Davis went on to become a prominent politician in the United States in the 1920s, serving as US Secretary of War from 1925–29 and as Governor-General of the Philippines from 1929–32. The first match, between the United States and Britain (competing as the "British Isles"), was held at the Longwood Cricket Club in Boston, Massachusetts in 1900. The American team, of which Dwight Davis was a part, surprised the British by winning the first three matches. The following year the two countries did not compete, but the US won the match in 1902 and Britain won the following four matches. By 1905 the tournament expanded to include Belgium, Austria, France, and Australasia, a combined team from Australia and New Zealand that competed together until 1914. The tournament was initially titled the ''International Lawn Tennis Challenge'' although it soon became known as the ''Davis Cup'', after Dwight Davis' trophy. The Davis Cup competition was initially played as a challenge cup. All teams competed against one another for the right to face the previous year's champion in the final round. Beginning in 1923, the world's teams were split into two zones: the "America Zone" and the "Europe Zone". The winners of the two zones met in the ''Inter-Zonal Zone'' ("INZ") to decide which national team would challenge the defending champion for the cup. In 1955 a third zone, the "Eastern Zone", was added. Because there were three zones, the winner of one of the three zones received a bye in the first round of the INZ challenger rounds. In 1966, the "Europe Zone" was split into two zones, "Europe Zone A" and "Europe Zone B", so the winners of the four zones competed in the INZ challenger rounds. From 1950 to 1967, Australia dominated the competition, winning the Cup 15 times in 18 years. Beginning in 1972, the format was changed to a knockout tournament, so that the defending champion was required to compete in all rounds, and the Davis Cup was awarded to the tournament champion. Up until 1973, the Davis Cup had only ever been won by the United States, Great Britain/British Isles, France and Australia/Australasia. Their domination was eventually broken in 1974 when South Africa and India made the final; however the final was scratched and South Africa awarded the cup after India refused to travel to South Africa in protest at South Africa's apartheid policies. The following year saw the first actual final between two "outsider" nations, when Sweden beat Czechoslovakia 3–2, and since then many other countries have gone on to capture the trophy. In 1981, the tiered system of competition in use today was created, in which the 16 best national teams compete in the ''World Group'' and all other national teams compete in one of four groups in one of three regional zones. In 1989, the tiebreak was introduced into Davis Cup competition. It is now used in all sets except for the fifth, which remains an advantage set, though it too will become a tiebreak from 2016. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Davis Cup」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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