![\"Team](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/BS3_1321-750x500.jpg\")
Team Europe\u2019s Casper Ruud is the first player to practice on Laver Cup\u2019s signature black court in San Francisco. Photo: Ben Solomon\/Laver Cup<\/p>\nWith the racquet-to-ball clamor of a full-throttle Casper Ruud practice session echoing throughout San Francisco\u2019s Chase Center, the gathered media got their first glimpse of new Team World Vice Captain Patrick Rafter on Monday, alongside Laver Cup CEO\u00a0Steve Zacks, and Golden State Warriors\u00a0President and COO Brandon Schneider.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the reasons why the players love to play the Laver Cup is because they get to be mentored by these legendary captains,\u201d said Zacks, a nod to the Aussie Rafter, whose graceful serve-and-volley game earned him back-to-back US Open titles in 1997 and 1998, and the world No. 1 ranking in 1999.<\/p>\n
\u201cLaver Cup is a place that welcomes a lot of the greats to come back, to have new roles,\u201d Zacks added. \u201cWe\u2019ve got players from the past, current stars, and the young generation all coming together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rafter, 52, was hand-picked in January by fellow International Tennis Hall of Famer and newly installed Team World Captain Andre Agassi, once a fierce rival. The two faced each other on 15 occasions on the men\u2019s tour between 1993 and 2001, nearly half of those encounters coming on the Grand Slam stage. (Agassi took the head-to-head, 10-5.)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been interesting for me to get to know Andre on a personal level a little better,\u201d said the red-jacketed Rafter. \u201cWhat I love about him is his passion. He is so into this event. It\u2019s game on. The players are going to feel that. It\u2019s going to rub off on them. He\u2019s going to be intense. I think I\u2019m going to be the one to calm it down a little bit. That passion brings a different energy, but at the same time it brings excitement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taking over for brothers John and Patrick McEnroe, Agassi and Rafter will do their best to narrow their foes\u2019 5-2 advantage in this Team Europe vs. Team World competition. To do that, they will need some step-up performances from Taylor Fritz, Alex De Minaur, Francisco Cerundolo and Reilly Opelka, as well as Laver Cup rookies Jo\u00e3o Fonseca and Alex Michelsen.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeam Europe is very strong. They\u2019ve got a lot of depth. They\u2019ve got some great players,\u201d said Rafter, who was also getting his first in-person look at the iconic black Laver Cup courts. \u201cEvery time you play Team Europe, it\u2019s going to be a tough ask, just purely because of their depth. But we\u2019re here to compete, we\u2019re here to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Team Europe\u2019s Casper Ruud is the first player to practice on Laver Cup\u2019s signature black court in San Francisco. Photo: Ben Solomon\/Laver Cup<\/p>\n
That aforementioned depth comes in the form of Ruud, rechristened No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz, Laver Cup veteran Alexander Zverev, Holger Rune, Jakub Mensik and first-timer Flavio Cobolli, all playing under new skippers Yannick Noah and Tim Henman.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just looking forward to getting to know the guys, get them on court, help them with their game. If I can help them with their serve-and-volley, I like to think I can add a little bit to their game. Andre can do the baseline side of things,\u201d Rafter said with a smile. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t my forte.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to try to change their game,\u201d he continued. \u201cWhat I\u2019m trying to do is work with them. What do they need to work on? Maybe a slight tweak. There are a couple of the guys who really want to move forward, and they\u2019re asking me how to do that. That\u2019s my job over the next week. They\u2019re going to pick things up. I\u2019m hoping what I pass on to them is something they can use for the rest of their careers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rafter has a special tie to 20-time major singles titlist Roger Federer, who co-founded the Laver Cup with his agent, Tony Godsick, in 2017. Rafter, after all, topped Federer in the Swiss\u2019 first appearance at a major at Roland Garros in 1999.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a young kid coming through,\u201d recalled Rafter, who claimed the first-round contest, 5-7, 6-3, 6-0, 6-2. \u201cLleyton Hewitt had played a lot against him and warned me, \u2018This guy\u2019s good\u2019. He was only 17, a wildcard. I came off the court and said, \u2018Holy hell, he knows what he\u2019s doing. He\u2019s just soft. He\u2019s going to have to learn his game over time.\u2019 I got to play him again a couple of times. The last time I played him, I just squeaked out a win [4-6, 7-6(6), 7-6(4)]. He had match points on me. I said, \u2018It\u2019s time to leave the game.\u2019 You could just see how beautiful his strokes were. He\u2019s a revolutionary player who changed the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rafter says he hopes to carry on the tradition forged by former Team World\/Team Europe mentors Bjorn Borg, Thomas Enqvist and the McEnroes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did such a great job. You can just see the standard they set here, how high it is, the quality,\u201d Rafter observed. \u201cThe players want to come. We want to make this the pinnacle of team events around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the racquet-to-ball clamor of a full-throttle Casper Ruud practice session echoing throughout San Francisco\u2019s Chase Center, the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":230756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[3098,7935,1466,10789,124402,62,12335,1464,124403,67,132,68,124404],"class_list":{"0":"post-230755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-alexander-zverev","9":"tag-andre-agassi","10":"tag-carlos-alcaraz","11":"tag-casper-ruud","12":"tag-patrick-rafter","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-taylor-fritz","15":"tag-tennis","16":"tag-tim-henman","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-yannick-noah"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115212697313507415","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}