Davis Cup's future threatened by row

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34128, 14 April 1976, Page 27

Davis Cup's future threatened by row

(NZPA-Reuzer—Gopyrigntj PALMA de MALLORCA (Spain).

The United States will pull out of next year’s Davis Cup tennis competition if Mexico is not expelled, the tournament’s top official said yesterday.

The Davis Cup management commitee’s recommendation that Mexico be expelled will be put before the annual meeting of the Davis Cup nations in London in July, the management committee chairman, Mr W. Harcourt Woods, of the United States, told reporters. If the July meeting did not endorse the committee’s stand by a 75 per cent majority, the United States would pull out of the competition. Mr Woods said.

The controversy follows Mexico’s refusal last February to play South Africa in the Davis Cup because of South Africa’s apartheid policy.

Under the tournament rules, a three-quarters majority at its annual meeting is needed to expel a member from the tournament on the grounds that it has endangered the competition. A counter-proposal lodged by Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Mexico demands that South Africa be expelled from the Davis Cup.

Mr Woods said the antiSouth Africa motion would also go before the London meeting, with the addenda that “by majority, the management committee strongly opposes this motion.’’

He said that if Mexico was not expelled from the 1977 tournament, the United States would carry out a

unanimous motion adopted at a national Davis Cup annual meeting in Florida earlier this year to “have nothing more to do with the competition.”

A United States withdrawal over the South Africa-Mexico issue could provoke similar moves by Britain and France.

But he added that Yugoslavia’s action could be backed by Eastern Bloc and Third World countries. An end to the Davis Cup tournament in its present form could not be discounted. Mr Woods added.

The secretary of the Davis Cup management committee (Mr Basil Reay, of Butain) said the present situation was a deadlock, with the future of the competition severely threatened. “Both sides are diametrically opposed to each other,” he said.