United Cup tennis: What is it and can Great Britain win it?

By Matt Hardy

It’s the newest team tennis competition on an already hectic calendar and it’s already describing itself as the curtain raiser of the season but the United Cup is in full flow and Great Britain are still in it, which is something.

The tournament is almost like a World Cup, with 18 teams – made up of both men and women – across six pools in three cities and a final, this Sunday.

But not even through its first cycle, it has already divided opinion.

Rafael Nadal, winner of 22 Grand Slams, has been critical of the United Cup scheduling after his side were forced to play a dead rubber in the final round. Australian Open chief Craig Tiley, meanwhile, has praised the tournament as fantastic.

“If you watched last night [Monday], we’ve had full stadiums, we’ve had over 120,000 people already go through the gate. Yesterday, 40,000 people in one day in Perth, Brisbane and in Sydney,” he said.

“That’s remarkable – we’ve never had that. It beats most major tennis events around the world for one day’s attendance. So [it is] unbelievably successful, great, positive feedback from the players.”

So how does the United Cup work?

There were six groups of three teams with two groups based in Brisbane, two in Perth and two in Sydney.

Each team plays the others in their group in a round robin format, with two men’s and two women’s singles matches and a mixed doubles match. The first to three wins taking the tie.

The winners of the two United Cup Brisbane groups – Italy and Poland – will play each other tomorrow morning in the “city finals”, while the winners of the two Perth groups – Greece and Croatia – and the winners of the Sydney groups – United States and Great Britain – will also play on Wednesday.

Britain overcame Australia and Spain to book their spot in the last six.

The semi-finals will consist of the three ‘city final’ winners plus the losing city finalist with the best record over their three matches on Friday.

The final will be on Sunday morning ahead of the Australian Open later this month.

Britain’s chances

Great Britain are one of the six teams left in the competition after beating both Australia and Spain in Group D.

But given that a loss in the next round would see their United Cup record pitted against the other losers, it’s worth noting that Britain have the worst game win percentage and set win percentage of the six teams remaining.

Madison Keys will kick off proceedings up against Britain’s Katie Swan before Taylor Fritz faces British No1 Cameron Norrie.

In what could be the first decider of the tie, Harriet Dart plays Jessica Pegula before Frances Tiafoe plays Dan Evans.

If the tie does go down to the final mixed doubles match, Dart and Evans will look to beat Pegula and Tiafoe for a spot in the last four.

The US are third seeds with GB 15th.

Greece, who are top seeds, remain in the competition while Poland, second seeds, also make up part of the final six.

What’s the point?

Well it’s worth noting that this competition is on the hard courts of Australia just a couple of weeks before the first Grand Slam of the year.

The United Cup competition therefore offers practice to players ahead of the major tournament in the same way the Adelaide Open has done in the past.

But beyond that there is a $15m prize pot for the winning side and up to 500 WTA and ATP ranking points for the individual players.

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