I'd forgotten Naomi would probably be in Australia by now - that (or the ongoing feud with the LTA, though I'd hope the change of Chief Exec would have allowed a line to be draw under that even if it hadn't been before) could have been a deciding factor as well.

I think a lot of players do care about the Fed Cup (and the Davis Cup, for that matter) - I mean, it's not surprising that those in with a realistic chance of winning slams prioritise those but for players outside, say, the top 10 (and even some of those inside), these team events can end up being the pinnacle of their careers - and in many cases, one of the few times they get to play a big event in front of a fired-up home crowd.

I'm pretty sure Judy and all of the team would consider getting promoted and getting a home Fed Cup tie (and perhaps even winning the event one day) a very big deal indeed. It's unfortunate that the jet-setting journos and former top players who are always carping about Davis Cup and Fed Cup (and who would rather do away with home/away ties and play the whole thing in one place) don't get this any more than Ratty does.

Of course, it's easy to miss this point in the UK, when we haven't had any Fed Cup home ties for decades and the Davis Cup team hasn't won a World Group tie for so long, plus we are spoilt with big events on home soil like Wimbledon and the World Tour Finals, but if we did start doing ok at World Group level in either event, I think interest would rise very quickly.

You sound really convinced!

I'm with Ratty Fed Cup and Davis Cup mean little really in the grand scheme of things
Especially when you see the top players not bothering.

I think Andy's point was that he likes playing DC but feels that he might be giving the other top players an advantage if he plays when they don't, whereas if it was mandatory and they all played, it would make for a more level playing field and they might all then be more likely to play DC on a regular basis.

The question is, what does he mean by mandatory? My guess is that he was thinking along the lines of the current rules about having to take zero-pointers if you don't play. Presumably it would work a bit like 500s do now, i.e. if you play less than four of them, you can have to carry a zero-pointer for each one missed, whereas if you play 4 of more, you can score for all of them or include and extra score from a 250 event if your 500 event scores are not that good.

This would make a lot more sense than giving ATP ranking points for Davis Cup play, which is in many ways unfair and doesn't have the desired effect anyway. It could make playing DC as accepted as playing Masters series events and slams on a surface you don't like. Obviously there are reasons why it wouldn't be that easy to put into practice and there would be ways of getting round it, but I think what I have outlined is probably the kind of thing he meant.

I'm kinda hoping the 3 Romanian girls in action this week do particularly well, forcing at least one to pull out of next week.

So I'll be going incognito for a while. If you want any updates on Fed Cup stuff, give me a follow @philwrig on twitter, hopefully the wifi will be good enough to do this.

And Tony, hope to see you at some stage early next week.

And yes still no schedule !!!!!

I was at the Paris indoor event today and among other players I saw Simona Halep play. She lost to Mladenovic in a match that showed Halep is vulnerable to a big hitting opponent indoors, which is precisely the type of player we... er, no longer have without Laura :(

(Perhaps typically for a day of tennis, the headline match of Sharapova v Hantuchova was a bit disappointing and the one match I wasn't planning on watching at all, Voegele v Voskoboeva was the most exciting)

I'll be arriving in Budapest some time on Tuesday, and I'm hoping some sort of schedule at least emerges by Sunday night.

-- Edited by tony_orient on Wednesday 29th of January 2014 10:45:06 PM