Heads down, at times with a lost look when they received questions from journalists accredited in Malaga, Lleyton Hewitt, Australian captain of Davis cupand Alex De Miñaur, his number one player, gave an account at the Martín Carpena of the loss to Canada in the final for the salad bowl.
Ubaldo Scanagatta, from Ubitennis, was the one who brought up the fact that, for the second year in a row, the doubles did not have to intervene to decide the tie, which was ventilated in this case by Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime defeating Thanasi Kokkinakis and the cited De Minaur respectively. And it is that with the current format, three points per tie, two singles at the beginning and a final doubles, this can often happen. Previously, two singles, one doubles and, if applicable, another two singles were played. Having the tag team match in the middle of a best-of-five series guaranteed their contest.
“Everyone knows my feelings. I feel disappointed, for example, by the Dutch team. They have a quality couple, who have been working hard all year, come here, to what is considered the big event of the year, and they don’t have the opportunity to play a game (Australia defeated the Dutch in the quarterfinals 2-0, without reaching the doubles)”, Lleyton expounded. “I think it’s a misconception and nobody listens,” he added.
Hewitt doesn’t think there’s a chance of that changing, at least in the near future, and the truth is that the CEO of Kosmos, the company that organizes the event together with the ITF, agreed with him in another previous press conference offered yesterday in Malaga (he assured that there would be no changes in the format soon).
“I can talk and get angry until my face turns blue, but nothing is going to change. We keep putting band-aids on the problems, we don’t solve them, “continued a Hewitt who believes that if this had been done before it would have hurt some of the best couples in history: “I played with the best doubles team in history, the Woodies (Todd Woodbridge y Mark Woodforde). If this format had been in place, wouldn’t they have played a game? I don’t think that’s right.”
