BNP Paribas World Team Cup moves to October in 2021
The BNP Paribas World Team Cup events will switch to two new slots in the UNIQLO Wheelchair Tennis Tour calendar in 2021. The World Group event is moving to October, while the four regional qualification events will be consolidated at a single venue in May.
First played in 1985, the World Team Cup – a team event contested between nations across the four wheelchair tennis divisions: men’s, women’s, quads and juniors – has been staged in 19 nations. The 2019 event was held in Ramat Hasharon, Israel, where Great Britain, Netherlands, Japan and Australia respectively were crowned champions.
With next season set to be a Paralympic year and with ongoing travel and safety concerns due to Covid-19, the switch of the World Group event from May to October has been taken to minimise the risk of disruption to the competition, which was cancelled in 2020.
Portugal was set to become the 20th country to host the World Group event in May 2020, and will instead host the new combined regional Qualification event at the Vilamoura Tennis Academy from 10-16 May 2021, which will feature qualification for the quad event for the first time since its World Team Cup debut in 1998.
Over 300 players will represent their nations for the chance to be crowned BNP Paribas World Team Cup champions in 2021, starting at the Qualification event. Teams from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia/Oceania will face off to join the automatic qualifiers at the World Group event, which will be held at the Olbia Sport Centre Geovillage in Sardinia, Italy, from 4-10 October 2021.
The automatic qualifiers for the World Team Cup World Group event are:
Men’s: Great Britain, France, Japan, Argentina, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, USA, Korea Rep. and Brazil, with four qualifiers and two wild cards completing the 16-team field
Women’s: Netherlands, Japan, Great Britain, South Africa, China P.R., USA, Thailand and Colombia, with four qualifiers completing the 12-team field
Quad: Japan, Israel, South Africa, Great Britain, USA and Canada, with two qualifiers completing the eight-team field
Juniors: Australia, Great Britain, Turkey and Brazil, with four wild card nations completing the eight-team field.