Organisers of an ATP Tour tennis event are trying to fix their courts after players refused to play on them on Saturday. The Tennis Napoli Cup, which was moved up in classification from a Challenger to ATP Tour event this year, is due to commence on Monday but there are doubts over whether the courts will be ready in time.
French Open and US Open quarter-finalist Andrey Rublev is one of the players due to compete at the Italian event, along with fellow top-50 stars Pablo Carreno Busta, Roberto Bautista Agut, Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, Lorenzo Musetti and Gael Monfils.
The organisers confirmed that qualifiers would be postponed while the courts were fixed but expected the main tournament to start as planned on Monday. In a statement on Facebook, Tennis Club Napoli 1905 posted: “Due to problems related to the material used to build the courts by a company, world leader of the industry and therefore independent from the organisation, it has become necessary to postpone the tournament qualification matches scheduled for today and tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, to allow the necessary interventions.
“For this reason the qualifying matches will not take place on the tennis club Naples courts. The tournament will start as usual on Monday with the main scoreboard.”
