Fifth Davis Cup, the excuse to practise English apart from tennis

Rafael Nadal defeated Juan Carlos del Potro at Seville´s Olympic Stadium on Sunday to hand Spain their fifth Davis Cup.
What´s the importance of this exploit for Spanish sport? Everybody knows that tennis is one of the world´s most widely-played sports, and  also a popular  spectator sport, with  star players in tournaments watched on tv by millions of fans all over the world.This means fame and  respect.


It´s important to know some facts about Davis Cup , a competition that started in 1900 between USA and Great Britain, then playing under the name of the British Isles. It was held at the Longwood Cricket Club in Boston and the Americans surprised their opponents by racing into an unassailable 3-0 lead. of the world´s most widely-played sports, enjoyed by players of all ages, and it´s also a popular spectator sport, with star players, Nadal is one of them, watched on tv by millions of fans all over the world.

The idea of Davis Cup was conceived a year earlier by four members of the Harvard University tennis team, who wished to set up a match between USA and Great Britain. Once the two respective national associations had agreed, one of the four players, Dwight Davis, designed a tournament format and ordered a trophy, buying it with his own money.

The tournament was originally known as the International Lawn Tennis Challenge, but soon became known as Davis Cup after Dwight Davis’s trophy, which was designed by William Durgin and crafted by Rowland Rhodes.

Source of facts: daviscup.com 

If you want to practise English by listening to and watching all the protagonists of such an event, you can do it at:

http://www.daviscup.com/en/audio/index.aspx  and
http://www.daviscup.com/en/video/index.aspx

Tasks:

Due to its wide-world spread, tennis is close to  English as the habitual language tennis stars use to communicate in their tournaments and with the press.

1. Learn and revise tennis terms and expressions:

 http://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/sports-tennis.htm

2. If you are not sure what strokes these are: backhand, forehand volley, forehand and serve, visit:

http://www1.american.edu/IRVINE/lori/Animation.htm

3. Complete the Wimbledom tennis tournament on line crossword:

http://www.esolcourses.com/content/topics6june/wimbledon/wimbledon-crossword.html

4. Fill in the gaps  with words from the box below:

deuce, four,  net, serving,  yellow,  Tournament, Opens

1. A tennis court is divided into two halves by a ________
2. A game begins with a player ______________
3. In a doubles match, there are __________ players on the court.
4. A match is usually the best of three or five__________.
5. When the score gets 40-40, the umpire says___________.
6. The famous Wimbledom_______________ is held in England.
7. The four major tournaments are: Wimbledom and the French, U.S. and Australian_____________.
8. _______________ tennis balls were used at Wimbledom for the first time in 1986.