NADAL HITS OUT AT CUP FORMAT

TENNIS Australia’s underwhelming new, woke team tournament has come under fire from Rafa Nadal for needlessly producing too many meaningless matches.

It is not often that Nadal bites the hand that feeds him so when the Spanish legend does speak up, he’s usually right on the money.

And in this case, the Spaniard is spot on in calling out the baffling format being used for the inaugural United Cup – which has already been labelled a $22 million flop after replacing time honoured events that Australian fans had embraced for generations, including the NSW Open, that was first held in 1885.

While the idea of playing an expanded mixed gender team event has received some praise, the ill-conceived decision by tennis officials to split the 18 national teams into six groups of three has gone down like a lead balloon.

With only the group winner advancing, this has left some teams playing entire ties with nothing at stake.

In the case of Spain and Australia, they were put in the insane situation of contesting five matches over two days – all for zilch – because neither team could advance in the tournament after losing their opening ties to Britain.

That’s left some tennis superstars – including the Australian Open’s defending champion Nadal – reconsidering their preparations for the first grand slam of 2023 in Melbourne because of the scheduling blunder.

“I’m probably gonna leave Wednesday. I don‘t know,” Nadal said. “Visit a little bit the city here Wednesday morning and then leaving in the afternoon. Maybe.”

Nadal is not the first foreign superstar to be left to fend for himself after local tennis officials stuffed things up and he’s not the only one unimpressed by the United Cup.

Plenty of big name players have skipped the tournament altogether – including nine-time Australian Open winner Novak Djokovic, current world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz and last year’s Melbourne Park runner-up Daniil Medvedev.