Murray Suggests Mandatory Davis Cup Participation

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 13th September 2013

Murray Suggests Mandatory Davis Cup Participation

epa03849875 Andy Murray of Great Britain reacts after losing a point to Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan during their match on the ninth day of the 2013 US Open Tennis Championship at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York, USA, 03 September 2013. The US Open runs through Monday 09 September, a 15-day schedule for the first time. EPA/JASON DECROW |

A two year absence from representing his country in the Davis Cup would seem to suggest Andy Murray does not rate the importance of the competition too highly. However the Wimbledon champion and world no.3 has revealed he would dearly love to play more and feels the demands of the ATP Tour force top players to skip some ties.

Therefore Murray is proposing the ATP strikes an accord with the International Tennis Federation and new legislation is put in place to ensure players have no option but to turn out for their country and do national service. “They should make Davis Cup a mandatory event so it isn’t up for discussion,” said Murray, adding that the obligation to play some smaller events on the tour should be lifted to make a balance.

Clearly Murray’s ideas would promote much discussion at ATP board level and it is unlikely that the three members mandated to uphold the interests of tournaments, Gavin Forbes, Charles H. Smith and Mark Webster, would agree. But the Scot pointed out: “We’re told which events to play throughout the whole year.

“It isn’t about prioritizing Davis Cup. But we don’t have much flexibility in our schedule at all, and that’s why I don’t understand why they don’t make Davis Cup a mandatory event. We are meant to play 18 mandatory events during the year, which is about 27, 28 weeks’ worth of tournaments, and we don’t get to decide which ones we do and don’t play.”

Currently players’ rankings are determined by the performances in 18 tournaments. For leading performers such as Murray this breaks down into the four Grand Slams, the nine ATP World Tour Masters 1000 events, plus up to five others, which are deemed mandatory.

Three of those five are supposed to be ATP 500 events, plus many players also feel the need to contest warm-up events before the Australian Open, which comes hard on the heels of the off-season, and Wimbledon, which currently is only preceded by two weeks of grass court competition after a long clay court season.

“The hard part about it is the surface changes,” maintained Murray who made the point the likes of him Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and other top ten performers feel that committing to up to four Davis Cup ties a year puts too much strain on the body. “Going from hard courts to clay courts to hard courts in a three-week span is difficult.

“Davis Cup finishes on a Sunday and there are tournaments that start on the ATP Tour on Tuesday. That’s unhealthy – it’s not good for the body to travel from a tie on a Sunday night, hit once on a hard court, and then play a match on it going flat out.”

According to BBC Sport, ITF president Francesco Ricci Bitti finds Murray’s views, ‘interesting,’ He said: “The ITF is always open to consider new ideas to improve the competition and available to discuss with the relevant parties.”

Topics: 10sballs, Andy Murray, Atp World Tour, Davis Cup, Itf, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Sports, Tennis