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Tennis legend Leyton Hewitt has described the current format of the Davis Cup as a “four-year disaster” and called for a clean sweep of the personnel responsible for organising it. The two-time Grand Slam winner saw his Australian team progress to the quarter-finals of the international team competition thanks to a 3-0 victory against Switzerland on Saturday that secured second place in Group B behind Great Britain.
The knockout stages will be contested in Malaga, Spain next month, but the group stage matches were held across four different European locations – Bologna, Manchester, Split and Valencia.
However, there were plenty of empty seats at all venues and Hewitt firmly believes that is a direct consequence of the restructuring of the competition that came into effect in 2019, when the International Tennis Federation (ITF) agreed to a reported £2.4billion 25-year deal with the Kosmos Group.
As part of the deal, the traditional home and away ties format was scrapped in favour of holding all group matches across just four venues in different cities.
The change was unpopular with players and fans from the very start and to make matters worse, the ITF and Kosmos ended their association earlier this year, 20 years early.
Despite Australia making it through to the knockout stages. Hewitt took the opportunity of his press conference to slam the ITF for allowing the fundamental changes to continue.
He said: “I’ve said for years the two greatest things that Davis Cup had was the best-of-five sets, because it was the pinnacle of our sport, and the home and away format.
“Playing in front of 500 or 1000 people, it’s not the same. But as I’ve told my team all the time, the pride comes in wearing the green and gold, so for us no matter what the format is, we’re still gonna go out there and leave it all on the line.
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“But do I agree this format is good? No, not for a minute. We’ve gotta get rid of people at the top… we’ve seen what’s happened, it was meant to be a 25-year thing and it’s turned into a four-year disaster.
“So until changes are made, we’re gonna sit back and go through exactly the same stuff every year. I can say it until the cows come home, but they’ve really screwed it up.”
Hewitt’s criticism echoes that of Swiss star Stan Wawrinka, who took aim at former Barcelona star Gerard Pique, who chairs the Kosmos Group, for altering the format of the Davis Cup, before accusing the ITF of “paying people to support and make some noise for every country at every match”.
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