When David Haggerty, the president of the tennis world association ITF, recently presented his plan for a new Davis Cup (named the World Cup of Nations), which has nothing to do with Davis Cup in reality, an interesting detail became known.
The investor group Kosmos – under the direction of professional footballer Gerard Picque – had also negotiated such a project with the men’s professional union ATP, but had not reached an agreement.
In the hierarchically tattered tennis landscape, this in turn leads to the almost logical, yet ludicrous consequence that two initiatives that are not really meaningful are now going into competition. ATP boss Chris Kermode has now announced that his organisation does not want to give up its plans for a week-long World Team Cup – and intends to launch this show event together with Tennis Australia in the first week of the year.
First week, wasn’t there something? Exactly: The Hopman Cup, still managed by ITF and Tennis Australia. A well-established show competition, sometimes affectionately exaggerated as an unofficial World Championship of mixed doubles.
Now there is talk of a race against time, namely a competition to determine who can fix his project as the first contract-tight project. In reality, no one needs this race, no one needs the ITF national tournament in November somewhere state-funded in Asia, and no one needs the once peaceful and deserved World Team Cup in the first week of the season as a substitute for the functioning Hopman Cup.
As with the ITF’s suggestion on the Davis Cup reform, it seems strange that women’s tennis is completely ignored and ignored.
The role of the Australian Tennis Association is particularly dubious. It seems that Tennis Australia is now involved in every conceivable commercial project – after the Australian Open, the former Happy Slam, has already been transformed into a greedy money machine.
Tennis Australia participates in the Laver Cup, which has a clear rivalry with the Davis Cup. As one of the four Grand Slam nations, Tennis Australia is an integral part of the decision-making process for the Davis Cup reforms – which recently led to a loss of importance in the Haggerty paper.
And Tennis Australia now wants to be a partner of the ATP in the World Team Cup, the next team competition in world tennis. If this happens, the season would end with the World Cup of Nations in November and start with the World Team Cup next season – without any idea for the Fed Cup’s future. What a clutter.
Who should and can see this as progress for tennis?