Wally Masur backs Lleyton Hewitt and his decisions, saying Tomic has to..
A former world no. 15 and the Australian 2015 Davis Cup captain Wally Masur is the performance director at Tennis Australia and he had he react and give his thoughts about the recent feud in the Davis Cup squad. Namely, Bernard Tomic openly spoked about the current Davis Cup captain Lleyton Hewitt and the fact players like him, Thanasi Kokkinakis and Nick Kyrgios are not happy about how Hewitt manages the team and makes his decisions. Tennis Australia chief executive Craig Tiley decided to stay silent on Monday and allow Masur to express the Federation's support towards Hewitt, defending the current Davis Cup captain and standing on the same side with him concerning the questionable disposal of the Australian Open wild cards.
Thanasi Kokkinakis, who has been struggling with injuries for a couple of years now, had to play in the qualifying draw while Alex Bolt, Alexei Popyrin, Jason Kubler, Marc Polmans and James Duckworth all secured the main draw invitation before him. Tomic wasn't happy about that decision either, saying Hewitt has built a team of players around him, playing doubles with them and granting them invitations for the home tournaments.
"Lleyton's not afraid of hard work. You saw that in his playing career and he's doing it as Davis Cup captain. He has the support of Tennis Australia," Masur said. "He's a tremendous worker and he responds to people that are prepared to meet him halfway. I was watching a lot of tennis yesterday on Monday, there were some good stories so it was disappointing to wake up and read those Tomic's comments. A lot of people are under the apprehension that players are contracted to Tennis Australia and we control players and that's just not the case.
When you get out on tour, you get the ranking and nobody or no federation or individuals can stop you and that's the beauty of the sport. We support them on their journey and at some point they become self-funding and they run their own race. That's where we're at with Bernie as well. There's quite a process to picking wildcards. You look at form, fitness.. rankings, results. You look at age and attitude. They're very individual decisions based on the nominations from Lleyton. Thanasi didn't get one and I'm sure he was disappointed but he sucked it up, didn't say a word, went out there and smashed it and won his qualifying. Credit to him for that."
from Tennis World USA http://bit.ly/2DctJ3J
No comments