Nicolas Mahut, who won the Davis Cup in 2017, has expressed his harsh opinion on the format that has characterized the most important team event in recent years. The Frenchman told in an exclusive interview with L’Equipe: “We lost four years of Davis Cup.
We should never have allowed all of this. Maybe they thought they were making a good decision, but they immediately saw that it wasn’t working. The idea of doing some kind of World Cup of tennis could not work. The public did not respond.
It’s a total failure. It wasn’t even shown on the big channels in France. I am very angry with ITF President Haggerty. He had the bad idea to let us down, and now we can only wonder what will happen. Giudicelli also knows what I think of his decision as vice president of the ITF and president of the FFT.
It is evident that he too bears much of the responsibility for this fiasco, and I see that he does not question it. In France we have always had a very strong Davis Cup culture, but I guess young kids didn’t want to play this competition that Kosmos forced on us, contrary to what many might think.”
The format and criticisms of the Davis Cup
The radical revolution imposed by the Kosmos Group on the Davis Cup has not had the desired effects.
The ITF has in fact decided to prematurely terminate the collaboration with the company founded in 2017 by Gerard Piqué and terminate the partnership with immediate effect. Kosmos had bought the rights to organize the Davis Cup in 2018 and was expected to manage the prestigious team competition for at least 25 years.
According to the Marca newspaper, the Kosmos Group would have decided to appeal to the TAS (Sports Arbitration Court) and file a lawsuit against the ITF. The Spanish media have explained the story in detail and according to Kosmos the contract would have been interrupted due to a unilateral and completely unfounded choice.
