ITF confident over Davis Cup future despite plans for rival event 14/01/2010 |
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The International Tennis Federation (ITF) has played down suggestions that proposals for a ‘World Cup’ tournament could spell the end of the Davis Cup.
It emerged on Wednesday (Jan 13) that an Australian sports marketing company had presented plans to several national tennis bodies and the world’s leading players for a 32-team biennial men-only ‘Grand Slam of Tennis’ in a bid to attract new audiences to the game.
World number four Novak Djokovic revealed that the idea came from the ATP Player Council and confirmed that the leading male players would discuss the proposal further at next week’s Australian Open.
But ITF executive vice president Juan Margets said: “We are prepared to listen and see more details but are extremely confident in the future of the Davis Cup.
“We received a draft proposal from this Australian group a couple of months ago, before the Davis Cup Final in December, and they were invited to attend the last Davis Cup committee meeting in December but they didn’t come.”
“We don’t see this as an automatic replacement for the Davis Cup,” Margets told BBC Sport.
“The Davis Cup has evolved over 110 years, with the abolition of the challenge round, the creation of the World Group, the seeding of nations according to objective criteria.
“The major difference with this proposal is that the Davis Cup is a home and away concept that has support from overseas television stations, fans and players.
“We will listen to the proposal and they are invited to our next Davis Cup committee meeting.
“If it is something we don’t see as interesting for us then, of course, any promoter is free to do what they want but it doesn’t look easy to implement.
“The benchmark is the Davis Cup final in December [between Spain and the Czech Republic in Barcelona] – 16,000 spectators every day in a top-quality stadium.
“As I say, we haven’t seen the details but the proposal of a 10-day tournament seems more like a version of the Dusseldorf event [ATP World Team Championship]. It is easier to say than to implement a two-week tournament every two years.”
However, Djokovic suggested that the sport could benefit from new innovations.
“It’s all fresh and it’s all ideas,” he added. “We have to consider other sides as well. This is the bottom line. Without sponsors there wouldn’t be a tournament – without tournaments, players wouldn’t exist.
“But still, players are the ones who are making the show and their opinions have to be greatly considered.
“This time I think that slowly things will get better. But these are things that cannot happen overnight.”
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