United Cup 2023: Rafael Nadal’s slams United Cup for meaningless competition
Rafa Nadal doesn’t often voice criticism, so when he slams the United Cup format after meaningless matches, Tennis Australia would do well to listen and change the woke format.
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Tennis Australia’s underwhelming new, woke team tournament has come under fire from Rafa Nadal for needlessly producing too many meaningless matches.
It is not often that Nadal bites the hand that feeds him so when the Spanish legend does speak up, he’s usually right on the money.
And in this case, the Spaniard is spot on in calling out the baffling format being used for the inaugural United Cup - which has already been labelled a $22 million flop after replacing time honoured events that Australian fans had embraced for generations, including the NSW Open, that was first held in 1885.
While the idea of playing an expanded mixed gender team event has received some praise, the ill-conceived decision by tennis officials to split the 18 national teams into six groups of three has gone down like a lead balloon.
With only the group
winner advancing, this has left some teams playing entire ties with nothing at stake.
In the case of Spain and Australia, they were put in the insane situation of contesting five matches over two days - all for zilch - because neither team could advance in the tournament after losing their opening ties to Britain.
That’s left some tennis superstars - including the Australian Open’s defending champion Nadal - reconsidering their preparations for the first grand slam of 2023 in Melbourne because of the scheduling blunder.
“I’m probably gonna leave Wednesday. I don‘t know,” Nadal said. “Visit a little bit the city here Wednesday morning and then leaving in the afternoon. Maybe.”
Nadal is not the first foreign superstar to be left to fend for himself after local tennis officials stuffed things up and he’s not the only one unimpressed by the United Cup.
Plenty of big name players have skipped the tournament altogether - including nine-time Australian Open winner Novak Djokovic and current world No.1 Carlos Alcaraz.
With the competition also being held in three different cities - Sydney, Brisbane and Perth - but only one getting to crown the champion, it’s little wonder fans and players feel like they’ve been sold a lemon.
“I‘m not sure yet about the schedule,” Nadal said. “But putting things in perspective, this competition I find a negative point.
“Competition is great. Idea is great. It‘s not great that today we are playing for nothing. I really believe -- it’s the first year of this competition, so that’s kind of things that need to fix, to improve, and to make it more interesting for everyone.”
Tennis Australia officials hate it whenever top players call them out so usually just ignore their complaints or sweep them under the carpet with corporate gibberish but they should be listening closely to Nadal.
Not only is he one of the most respected figures in tennis history but the Spanish veteran even gave officials a simple, quick-fix solution to eliminate all the embarrassing number of dead rubbers making a mockery of the event.
The only reason Spain and Australia ended up playing two days of meaningless matches was because the Aussies lost to the Brits on days one and two, then the Spanish lost to Britain on days three and four.
But Nadal said that could easily have been avoided if organisers had just used a little bit of commonsense and foresight by rescheduling Spain to play Australia on days three and four, thus ensuring the group winner would not be decided until the final tie.
“I really believe that in a group of three, the loser of the first tie needs to play with the team that didn‘t play yet, because that makes the competition much more interesting,” Nadal said.
“I don‘t think it is good for the competition that today we are playing against Australia, both of us being out of the tournament.
“That will not happen if the country who didn‘t play at the beginning played with the loser of the first day, all the matches gonna make sense.”
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