Andy Murray believes the Davis Cup changes are too drastic but has called on his fellow players to get behind the new format.
Proposals to make the team competition a World Cup-style event held at the end of November each year were voted through at the International Tennis Federation’s AGM last week.
The result was met with anger and dismay by a number of players and federations, who wanted to hold on to the traditional home-and-away format, which will now only be used for the first round in February.
The Lawn Tennis Association came out publicly against the plans on the eve of the vote but the ITF and Gerard Pique’s investment group Kosmos, which has pledged to plough $3billion [£2.3bn] into tennis over 25 years, secured the support they needed.
Asked how he would have voted, Murray said at a press conference ahead of the start of the US Open: “I would have abstained. Neither are the correct solution, I don’t think.
“From pretty much every single player that I’ve spoken to, and I’ve been in players council meetings where we’ve discussed things with the ITF and stuff, all players love playing Davis Cup. You can’t question that.
“But obviously something wasn’t working, because the top players were not playing. Whether that was because of scheduling, coming immediately after the slams, things like that. Possibly because it was every single year and it was a bit too demanding.
“I think there was potentially less drastic changes that could have taken place to make it better, like even keeping potentially the same format but doing it every couple of years. I’ve heard lots of different ideas and discussions that were not quite as drastic as what’s happened.
“I don’t think that having a week-long team event in the middle of November, followed by a week-long team event at the beginning of January [the new ATP World Team Cup], I think that’s confusing for fans. I don’t think that it makes it easy for the players to decide which one’s more important.
“But, the decision that’s been made, you need to give it a chance to work and see. We should try to get behind it and support it and see if it works. If it does, fantastic. But if not, I believe you can always change and go back. That’s also an option.”
Murray has not played in the competition since 2016, the year after he led Britain to a remarkable triumph but is weighing up whether to take part in next month’s play-off against Uzbekistan in Glasgow, knowing it could potentially be his last chance to play in Scotland.
Roger Federer has also played sparingly since winning the title with Switzerland in 2014 and admitted he is unsure what to think about the changes.
He said: “I was pretty quiet about the Davis Cup beforehand, just because I didn’t know how to fix it, but I always knew that the ITF was never going to change it from an every-year event to every-second-year event.
“Why would the ITF just give up something that they have? It’s not what the business asks for.
“So this is their proposal or their idea now. So they’ve got their hands full. I understand that there are players unhappy, sad, angry, and relieved. I don’t know what it is going to be yet.”
Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have been the most positive backers of the plan since it was revealed earlier this year.
Speaking last week in Cincinnati, Djokovic said: “I’m really glad that people of ITF are understanding the urgency of changing the format and the schedule. It was just not right, especially for the top players.”
