The first ever edition of the ATP Cup begins from January 2020 and while it will have a plethora of stars participation in its maiden season, Roger Federer surprised everyone by pulling out of the competition. Federer has now explained why he pulled out of the ATP Cup 2020.
Federer had earlier announced he wouldn’t be taking part in the 2020 ATP Cup because he wanted to spend more time with his family. However, questions were asked in relation to the number of exhibition matches he is playing in the interim, with matches in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Ecuador, apart from South Africa against arch-rivals Rafael Nadal.
The Swiss maestro explained when the decision to feature at the ATP Cup 2020 was to be made after Wimbledon, he had no reason to refuse featuring in the competition. However, the exhibition matches in South America had been in the cold storage for a while, with his knee injury and birth of kids making it tougher for Federer to schedule those matches in the previous years.
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He added:
“South America had priority for me to be quite honest but ATP Cup too to play the first week.”
“But then when I realised Stan wasn’t going to play, the family wasn’t going to travel to Sydney, honestly I said I’d rather be home with the family and take it easy, train some more and make the priority Australian Open and the World Tour Finals.”
Federer also pointed out to his ‘dream match with Rafa’, something he has been trying to get Nadal to agree on for the past ‘two or three years’.
Which is when, Federer said, something had to give and it came in the form of the ATP Cup 2020.
“Something just had to give and that was the ATP Cup. I was going to be very happy to play but it wasn’t that level of importance for me. That was that.”
“Normally I don’t take these kinds of decisions like this but I kind of got into that situation having to take a decision after Wimbledon.”
Federer’s decision to play at the Tokyo Olympics was another factor that made it tougher for him. The Tokyo Olympics will be played in August 2020.
This new tournament which will pit 24 of the top tennis nations against each other will be hosted at Sydney, Brisbane and Perth in the period between January 3 and 12. The round-robin matches will be followed by quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final on the last three days of the tournament.
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