Why is a Davis Cup match called a 'rubber'?

Answer 1

Usually a "rubber match" or "rubber game" of a 3 game series is only played if no one has a chance to sweep the series. If team A wins game 1 and team B wins game 2, it shows game 3 can go either way... Sorta like how rubber can bend either way.

Thus, "Rubber game" of the series.

According to Paul Dickson's The New Dickson's Baseball Dictionary (Harcourt Brace, 1999), a "rubber game" is "The last and deciding game of a series when the previous games have been split; e.g., the seventh game of the World Series." This tie-breaking sense of "rubber" apparently originated in the pulse-pounding English game of "bowls," or lawn Bowling. Despite its name, bowls has little in common with American bowling, and consists of rolling wooden balls (called "bowls") across a level green, the object being to get your ball as close as possible to (but not to hit) a little white ball at the other end of the green. "Rubber" in its tie-breaking sense first appeared in the context of bowls around 1599, and was in use by the card-playing crowd (whist, bridge, etc.) by 1744. A set of three games of bridge is still generally referred to as a "rubber."

Unfortunately, no one knows where "rubber" in this sense came from. It appears to be unrelated to the elastic sort of "rubber." (Incidentally, our modern elastic "rubber" is short for "India-rubber," from its original source in the East Indies. "Rubber" previously meant anything used to rub, smooth or clean.) Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable ventures that the term may have referred to two "bowls" rubbing together, a fatal error in the game of bowls. Or it might be a metaphorical use of "rubber" (something that expunges) referring to the "sudden death" third game of a series, the loss of which would conclusively "rub out" the losing team's hopes. But there is, sad to say, no solid evidence for either theory."

I think that 'rubber match' will mean the match that will decide the rubber ie the fifth in a series of five. The term rubber doesn't itself mean decisive.

Answer 2

According to Bill Kellogg - a committee member on the USA DAVIS CUP- the International Tennis Federation came up with another term to distinguish between a "match between nations" and the "individual match between the players". The term is a tie. For example USA vs France is a tie.

The term "rubber" is taken from other sports like cricket. Also used in Bridge to stand for 2 out of 3 games.

Rubber in tennis is the match between players. The dictionary definition says something like this: "a rubber is a deciding contest of 2 opponents who have previously won their same number of contests from each other."