BARCELONA: American tennis great Billie Jean King called this week for a combined women and men’s World Cup of tennis and for players to wear shirt numbers, to keep growing the sport.
The 39-time Grand Slam winner, including 12 singles titles, said she would bring the women’s Billy Jean King Cup and the men’s Davis Cup together into a World Cup.Formerly the Federation Cup, the finals of the competition renamed in King’s honour takes place in Seville from November 7-12, while the Davis Cup finals are in Malaga between November 21-26, with both currently labelled the ‘World Cup’ of tennis.
King said the influence of football means it is more essential than ever for tennis to have its own recognisable World Cup.“The World Cup has become more and more important because of the football ... the whole world understands World Cup,” she continued. Aryna Sabalenka, the current world number one, is not involved because her country Belarus was suspended from participating after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
King, 79, said tennis has to serve the fans first and one of the ways to do that would be to make players more identifiable on court.
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