Jamie’s fury at plans for cup revamp
JAMIE MURRAY has claimed that elite players are being ignored by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), who yesterday announced a vital vote on the future of the Davis Cup will take place on August 4.
On a difficult day for the organisers before the quarter-final between France and Great Britain starts here today, an unnecessary draw ceremony overran so badly that Dan Evans and Kyle Edmund had left for training before they could talk about their opening rubbers.
The French captain Yannick Noah claimed to be “heartbroken” over the decline of the competition, blaming “privileged people acting like privileged people”, while an official made a mockery of the event by putting the absent Andy Murray’s name on the scoreboard in place of Edmund’s, seemingly just for larks.
The world No1 is missing through injury, but in recent years, with no ranking points available and an already busy schedule, too many top players simply opt out of ties.
ITF chief executive David Haggerty is leading a revamp to make it easier for them to compete. However, when British captain Leon Smith took the podium, flanked only by his doubles players Murray and Dominic Inglot, to suggest the “ITF have to talk to the players”, Murray interjected to say: “I don’t know if that’s true.”
Murray said: “Dave made a speech to the Players’ Council and we gave our opinions and then the next day the message was, ‘We are going ahead anyway’. The players do not want a neutral venue final but they are pushing ahead. And we told them best-of-three sets for the singles, but that was months ago.
“It needs to change for the sake of their event because they are losing the top players. It is not as special as it used to be, which is a shame because it is a great event.”
Haggerty recognised Murray’s grumble but blamed a breakdown in communications after the meeting in September. The publication of some of the core ideas was intended as the beginning of a consultation, he said, rather than a finalised list of proposals. He added that federations would be able to vote at the ITF annual meeting in August to reduce singles rubbers to three sets and the formalities around each tie will be relaxed, although the issue of a neutral final has not gone away.
Meanwhile at the official pre-tie dinner, Noah had led a remarkable collective performance of an African song at the end of his after-dinner speech. He briefly got players and officials singing off the same hymn sheet.
Now the hope is that when Edmund steps onto the Kindarena court against Lucas Pouille, tennis finally pulls together to produce the competitive camaraderie only the Davis Cup can provide.
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