Nashville Hosting Davis Cup In April, 40 Years After Controversy

NASHVILLE, TN -- Belmont's Curb Event Center will host a Davis Cup quarterfinal tie between the United States and Belgium April 6 to April 8, the first time tennis' top men's international team event has come to the Music City since a controversial U.S.-South Africa match in 1978.

"The USTA is excited to bring the next U.S. Davis Cup tie to Nashville, a city with a strong passion for the sport, a region that has a vibrant tennis community, and an area with an incredibly diverse fan base," United States Tennis Association President Katrina Adams said. "We are lucky enough to have a host site in Belmont University that has been home to numerous high-profile events, and will truly embrace the international spectacle that is Davis Cup tennis."

Tickets go on sale February 23.

In 1978, Vanderbilt University's Memorial Gym hosted a tie between the United States and South Africa, one of the few appearances for the latter in international sporting competition between the enactment of 1977's Gleneagles Agreement, which barred members of the Commonwealth of Nations from competing against the country, and the end of apartheid in the early 1990s.

Then-USTA President Slew Hester bucked calls for the U.S. team to boycott matches against South Africa, prompting a response by a coalition including the NAACP and the Coalition Against Apartheid. A Nashville chapter of the coalition organized protests which drew as many as 5,000 people to Vanderbilt's campus.

The matches themselves were poorly attended, with one USTA official blaming The Tennessean's coverage of the backlash and protests, telling the New York Times that The Tennessean "destroyed the event."

During one match, Gerald Hornsby, a copy editor at The Tennessean, ran on to the court holding an anti-apartheid sign. Hornsby did have a press pass, though not from 1100 Broadway; instead it was from Seven Days, a Vermont alternative newspaper founded by pacifist David Dellinger, a member of the Chicago Seven.

It was the last Davis Cup appearance for South Africa until 1992.

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