Billie Jean King Cup: Marion Bartoli doesn’t skimp on criticism - "A lot of nonsense!"
Marion Bartoli isn't the only person who thinks the new format at the Billie Jean King Cup is a huge mistake.
by Stefan Bergmann
last edit: Nov 06, 2021, 01:32 pm
The Fed Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup have seen better days, especially in terms of audience interest. With the exception of the host's games in the final phase in Prague, the audience in the impressive O2 arena remained practically empty. Even the strange arrangements of the individual encounters did not make the event easier to consume.
While the French team captain Julien Benneteau spoke of a flop before leaving for the golden city, the former Wimbledon winner Marion Bartoli supported him in his point of view: “The Fed Cup and the Davis Cup were too time-consuming for them. Every year it was just too much. You should have said, 'We do this every two or three years'. But they wanted too much. Put everything in one week and they thought it was going to be great. "
Will the Davis Cup also become a “ghost game”?
While the subsequent scheduling of the WTA finals in Guadalajara (Mexico) caused a lot of criticism, the ITF, which is responsible for the team competition, got its fat from the French: “But it is not possible. A single host city ... So if it's not their own country that is playing, everyone doesn't care. The games start at 10:30 am so that nobody is watching, especially during Paris-Bercy. "
The former world number seven sees a similar catastrophe breaking in at the Davis Cup, which has also been wearing a new guise since 2019. “How could we destroy the Davis Cup with a group stage in Innsbruck and the final in Madrid? It's a lot of nonsense, it's ridiculous, it's agonizing, ”said Bartoli.