Lleyton Hewitt: 'I don't know how this Davis Cup format is going to go'
The first edition of the Davis Cup Qualifiers is less than ten days away, with the new format making a debut in the oldest team competition in men's tennis. Twenty four countries will fight for 12 places at Davis Cup finals in November in Madrid and one of the ties will take place in Adelaide where Australia host Bosnia and Herzegovina in two-day action. The reduced format of best-of-three matches and not a standard full weekend work are among the most significant changes in this year's Davis Cup campaign, an unpopular reform among both the players and captains.
The entire Australian tennis federation was suspicious about such radical cuts and gave its best to halt the Cosmos Group and their plans to turn Davis Cup into something it never was in the past. Australia was overwhelmed during the voting process last August in Orlando, Florida, and the newly-formed Davis Cup is about to kick-off next Friday, despite a general opinion it will not gather the best players. The Australia Davis Cup captain Lleyton Hewitt has been one of the most vocal opponents of the new Davis Cup but he accepts his team has to embrace the challenge and give its 100% against Bosnia to reach the finals and get a chance to play for the title.
"I don't know how this Davis Cup format is going to go, I really don't," Hewitt said. "My goal is just to get through Adelaide and get ourselves the best opportunity of going to the final. We'll work out what the best plan of attack is for the final, but we have eight or nine months to do that if we can get there. I would like to think that it's going to be a feature piece where a lot of the top players are going to play, but I've heard rumors that they may not either. For me, I will be fielding as strong an Australian team as we possibly can. For me, it's still representing Australia. It's wearing the green and gold. I have guys that would do anything to do that. We're going to use that as our cultural standards, playing for Australia. We're going to do everything to win."
from Tennis World USA http://bit.ly/2sJ5Evb
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