Nadal will return to the slopes after closing 2022 on the exhibition tour of Latin America that he shared with the Norwegian Casper Ruud and that ended in early December.
With points to distribute as a prize for the respective rankingsthe event that will be held three cities in Australia (Perth, Brisbane and Sydney), is a mixed competition which has Thursday the 29th as its starting point and which set the final for Sunday the 8th of January.
Many of the world’s leading players will play the first edition of the United Cup that takes up the idea of the extinct Hopman Cup and that it will mean the launch of the new tennis campaign.
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18 teams made up of a maximum of eight members -four men and as many women-, divided into six groups, two per venue, of three teams each that will play by the system of all against all. The winners qualify for a second round to set up the semifinals.
In that second round, the champion of each group will face the champion of the group with which they have shared headquarters.. From here will come a winner who will go to the semifinals together with the one who has achieved the most victories of the losers. Each duel will have two men’s matches, as many women’s matches and a mixed doubles.
A player can get a maximum of 500 points for the world rankingWTA or ATP, and the winning country will take 15 million euros.
The participation criteria for the United Cup has been based on the ranking: six have achieved the passport for the tournament based on the classification of their best player in the ATP; as many, based on the ranking of their best player in the WTA and the remaining six based on the combined ranking of their best player and player.
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These requirements have left teams like Serbia, Canada or Tunisia out of the event and with it Novak Djokovic, Felix Auger Aliassime or Ons Jabeur, who stand out among the main absences from the first edition of the tournament. However, there are other casualties from the competition despite the fact that their teams are included among the participants. This is the case of the world number one Carlos Alcaraz, the also Spanish Garbiñe Muguruza, the Italian Jannik sinner or the British Andy Murray.
Even so, the claims of the first edition of the United Cup are numerous. Among them stands out the number two in the men’s ranking and the man with the most Grand Slam titles, Rafael Nadal, who will begin his journey in the new course in Sydney, where the Spanish team has been included along with Australia and Great Britain in their first phase .
In addition to the winner of twenty-two majors, the tournament will feature names like the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, the German Alexander Zverev, Ruud himself, the Italians Matteo Berrettini and Lorenzo Musetti, the Australian Nick Kyrgios, the Pole Hubert Hurkacz and the American Taylor Fritz.
The entrance Nadal returns; breaks the United Cup was first published on newspaper TODAY.