Great Britain and Argentina has been exempted from February’s Davis Cup qualifying ties after being awarded a wild card into next year’s finals.
On Wednesday, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and Kosmos Tennis confirmed that the two countries have been given the wild cards due to their recent success in the competition. Britain won the tournament in 2015 followed by Argentina in 2016. Their nominations was selected by the Davis Cup Steering Committee. A group consisting of ITF president David Haggerty, vice-president Rene stammbach, Kosmos founder Gerard Pique and former player Galo Blanco.
As a result of the wild cards, the two countries will be replaced by Australia and Switzerland as the two seeded nations in the 2019 qualifier draw. Those two countries are the highest-ranked unseeded nations that lost in the 2018 world-group play-offs.
Next year the Davis Cup is set to undergo a radical change. The tournament will take place over one weekend and one week during the year. During the first weekend in February, 24 countries will play their qualifying ties either home or away. Then later in the year, the finals will be held at one venue over a week in November. A total of 18 teams are set to participate. Compromising of 12 qualified teams, the four semi finalists from 2018 and two wild cards.
The two wild card countries joins France, Croatia, Spain and the USA in booking their place in the 2019 finals. That quartet of teams automatically qualified for the finals after reaching the semi-finals of this year’s tournament.
Kosmos CEO speaks out
It is still unknown as to where the first edition of the week-long tournament will take place. Although Kosmos CEO, Edmund Chu, has stated that it will be held in Europe over the next two years. Kosmos has pledged to invest $3 billion into the competition over the next 25 years.
“I can say that the headquarters that will organize the first edition will be in Europe both in 2019 and 2020.” Spanish website Punto de Break quoted Chu as saying. “We will say it in a few days, many countries that will play it are European and we want it to be in that continent before it goes to Asia and North America.”
The revamp isn’t without its critics with some saying that the changes are too radical. Australia is a vocal opponent with team captain Lleyton Hewitt previously accusing the ITF of ‘killing’ the competition. Other countries and players have also expressed similar opinions.
Despite the criticism, Chu insists that the Davis Cup has been suffering in recent years due to a lack of investment. Something he believes was due to the historic competition not changing over the years.
“The idea came two years ago: Piqué and I were thinking about creating a World Cup for men and women, we both loved Davis, that passion that competition has, but we saw that It was a format that suffered, with problems of sponsors and investment. I think it was not good to have more than 100 years with very few changes.” He said.
The 2019 Qualifier Draw will be made this afternoon at 15:00 GMT. It will be streamed live on the Davis Cup website and on their Facebook account.
