The Laver Cup wrapped up its eighth iteration. I think I can conclusively admit that they’ve hit on something good. Even the first iteration in 2017, which had some of the bluster and silliness of pro wrestling, was already entertaining to me. Then in 2022, Roger Federer chose to retire at the Laver Cup—because his management company co-owns it—burning a classic afterimage on that gray court. Now I’m so bought that, even though I often forget this event exists, I always lock in when it does reappear on my TV. After the long days of the U.S. Open I often don’t want to look at a tennis ball for weeks; these matches won me back. It’s about as entertaining as tennis can get in late September.

A reason for all that is that the players are actually trying. Is the Laver Cup an exhibition? It has the official stamp of the ATP, but that isn’t everything. Over at Bounces, Ben Rothenberg has written up a satisfyingly thorough breakdown of tennis exhibitions, applying lots of different criteria. In my own head, I think I had been operating under a softer standard: Do the results of the tournament tell you anything of enduring value about the players, and the careers going forward? Some exhibitions are played at about 30 percent effort, and the run of the match is worked out ahead of time; I find that stuff mind-numbingly dull, and I can barely stay seated to watch it. At the Laver Cup, however, the tennis feels real enough that I even find myself changing my opinion about certain players.

For example: Were you guys too quick to terminate the hype on 19-year-old Joao Fonseca? Watching him beat Flavio Cobolli in straight sets, I was reminded what a freakishly good ball-striker he is. He was treated like a prodigy on the Sincaraz trajectory, his third-round run in Miami set expectations high for the summer, and he made the third round at Roland-Garros. While he didn’t pull off many more splashy results, there were still some highly competitive, narrow losses against players like Tommy Paul and Taylor Fritz. If you were expecting top 20 by the end of the season, then sure, it’s disappointing, but No. 42. I think Joao’s biggest deficit, compared with 19-year-old Carlos or Jannik, is movement—he doesn’t fly in and out of the corners like those guys did—and I’m awaiting the offseason training block that solidifies his physical foundation. But he’s learning. Whenever Fonseca was interviewed at the Laver Cup, he talked about how much he was absorbing from his teammates.

That is one cool aspect of the tournament: transfer of wisdom. Some of it is coming from the coaches. As someone who was born after Yannick Noah’s playing career, and spent many more hours watching his son play basketball, I’m deepening my appreciation of one of the coolest dudes ever to walk a tennis court. Andre Agassi’s recent, drastic turn toward the spotlight has revealed him as perhaps the world’s best analytical tennis talker. But there’s also a lot of horizontal exchange among the players. As Federer pointed out in an interview with The Athletic, it’s the one time of the year where you can ask your teammates nuts-and-bolts tennis questions and they won’t be as cagey about giving up an edge, since you’re all on the same team trying to win the same $250,000-a-head prize. It’s funny to see Sascha Zverev, navigating a very tense match, brushing off Carlos Alcaraz and specifically shouting for Casper Ruud to tell him where to stand on second-serve returns. That’s not a dynamic you see often in this solitary game.

Zverev would go on to lose that match to Taylor Fritz, who secured the win for Team World over Team Europe and probably had the best weekend of anyone. On Saturday he beat Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets, and while I’m sure he would’ve rather taken that win anywhere but Laver Cup, it will count on the official ATP ledger, updating their head-to-head to 1–3. He maintained a clear vision of what he wanted to do on court—increase the pace on the rally balls, strike early and often—and never wavered. Fritz’s great play coincided with a roughly biannual bad forehand day for Alcaraz. The best ground stroke on the men’s tour wasn’t finding its mark, but that’s also because the man on the other side of the court was playing arguably his best match of the season.

Fritz remarked afterward that these were tricky conditions for his matchup against Alcaraz. The gray Laver Cup hard courts are gritty and slow; those Wilson balls got roughed up and puffed up to grapefruit size. (Sidenote: Many fine rallies on this court. Give us more hard courts like these! Or take away the second serve.) “I felt like it was going to be very hard on a surface like this for me to hurt him. I felt like it was going to be very easy for him to put me out of position,” Fritz said. But his strategy still worked perfectly. It’s enough to make you wonder if Fritz, a former Indian Wells champ, might in fact be a slow hard-court specialist. Perhaps he gets fewer aces than he otherwise would, but he still has power to hit through the court, and this vastly improved but still limited lateral mover can retrieve more balls than he would otherwise. When he has a bit more time on the ball, he has phenomenal rally tolerance.

“I’m so proud of Fritzy, and I hope he realizes what he’s capable of,” said euphoric coach Agassi after the upset. This season Fritz had lost a very competitive Wimbledon semifinal against Alcaraz; does this win show him a way forward? I’ve already consigned 2026 majors to Sincaraz dominance, but maybe he can keep things more interesting. Even the fact that I’m speculating about this is a testament to the Laver Cup; rather than an isolated exhibition, it seems continuous with the fabric of pro tennis.