Billie Jean King wants the groups with a say in the tennis schedule to avoid potential conflicts such as the close timing and far distance between the WTA Finals and Billie Kean King Cup Finals, which led Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula to choose to compete in the former and skip the latter.
On a conference call Wednesday to promote the competition named in her honor — its finals will be Nov. 7-12 in Seville, Spain — King said she isn’t sure how much discussion there’s been between the International Tennis Federation, which oversees the BJK Cup, and the WTA, whose championships are Oct. 29 to Nov. 5 in Cancun, Mexico.
“We all need to get together and figure out a better calendar for the players and everybody knowing what’s going to happen, because you can’t start making these decisions, like on the (WTA) Finals, in October or … September,” King said. “They have to know ahead of time. It’s only fair.”
Added Conchita Martinez, tournament director for the BJK Cup Finals and, like King, someone who has a player won the team competition that used to be known as the Fed Cup: “We need to work together for better solutions.”
The WTA announced in June when its season-ending tour event would be played, but it did not make the site known until Sept. 7. The choice to hold the 2022 WTA Finals in Fort Worth, Texas, also was not announced until September of last year. That prompted Swiatek to point out that the location and the timing — competition in Fort Worth ended a day before the start of the Billie Jean King Cup Finals in Glasgow, Scotland — were problematic.
“This situation is not safe for our health and could cause injury,” Swiatek said last year.
She opted to participate in the WTA Finals and not play for Poland at the BJK Cup Finals in 2022 — and made the same decisions this time.
Gauff, the 19-year-old American who won the US Open last month for her first Grand Slam title, and Pegula also will be in Mexico and not in Spain.
It means three of the top four women in the WTA rankings will miss the BJK Cup Finals: No. 2 Swiatek, No. 3 Gauff and No. 4 Pegula.
“We need to focus on the positive here,” Martinez said. “I mean, we might not have three names here. But we have amazing players playing.”
Among the Grand Slam singles champions expected to participate in Seville are Marketa Vondrousova and Barbora Krejcikova for the Czech Republic, Sloane Stephens for the United States and Elena Rybakina for Kazakhstan.
King said she would like to see the BJK Cup and its equivalent for men, the Davis Cup, be combined.
“You know how I am about having the men and women work together,” she said.