The 2020 Australian Open will commence a week later than usual on January 20 with confirmation that a new 10-day team competition, the ATP Cup, will commence the new tennis year.
The ATP and Tennis Australia on Thursday revealed the $US15 million ($A20.6m) event in early January will be hosted in three, yet to be decided, Australian host cities as the curtain-raiser to the first grand slam of the year.
In a radical overhaul of the Australian summer calender, the team showpiece is likely to spell the death knell for the Sydney and Brisbane International men’s events.
“We’ve got cities that may want to maintain some of the events that they do or have an opportunity to be part of this,” Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley said.
“We’ll make the right choices and the right cities and some of the events will be replaced but that’s still to be determined.”
The ATP Cup will feature 24 teams in six groups of four, with eight teams emerging from the round-robin stage to compete in the knockout phase until only one team is left standing.
There will be up to five players in each team, with ties comprising two singles matches and one doubles match.
Rankings points will be on offer with world No.1 Novak Djokovic backing the ATP Cup – which will be played just six weeks after the International Tennis Federation’s revamped week-long Davis Cup finals in Madrid, Spain.
“I like that it’s owned by ATP, by the players,” he said.
“It’s going to be the best way to kick start the season. We don’t have too many team events. This is going to bring together a lot of nations.”
Djokovic said the current schedule had become saturated and that two team events in such a small space of time was “not sustainable”.
ATP President Chris Kermode and Tiley have said they hope to resolve the scheduling issue.
Kermode suggested the ATP should look to make some changes to the calendar in general, having discussed it with the sport’s other governing bodies, the ITF, WTA and all four Grand Slam events.
“What was great about our conversations was [they said] let’s all look at the calendar, what’s the ideal calendar,” Kermode said.
“… But I think it’s time to have a fresh look. It’s not going to happen overnight but the tone of that meeting was very good, and let’s see what happens in the future.”