Forget slams ATP plans

PARIS: French Open director Guy Forget hit out on Tuesday at the ATP’s plans to restart the World Team Cup, saying it could hurt the fortunes of the historic Davis Cup.

The International Tennis Federation (ITF) announced last month a plan to run the Davis Cup — traditionally played over four weekends spread across the season — over a single week in November from next year.

But the ATP is hoping to revive the World Team Cup to be played for the first time in eight years in January 2020, possibly only two months after the Davis Cup.“We could end up with two strictly identical competitions a few weeks apart, which I think would be dangerous,” said former world number four Forget.

“There is no place in the calendar to have two competitions of this kind. Whatever the format of the Davis Cup, I hope it will have the edge.”The ITF is hoping the possible change to a one-week format improves the appeal of the Davis Cup, which has seen leading players, including Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, skip ties over scheduling concerns. The ITF’s proposal will be put forward at a meeting in August in Orlando.

“From the moment when the best don’t play in it anymore, the Davis Cup loses some of its allure, maybe not in France, but in other countries it is the case,” added three-time Davis Cup winner Forget.

Unlike the Davis Cup, the ATP’s revived World Team Cup, announced last week, would offer world ranking points. The last time the World Team Cup was played in 2012, Czech Tomas Berdych and Serbia’s Janko Tipsarevic were the only top-20 players to take part.