Late deal unlikely, says tennis coach

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 13

Late deal unlikely, says tennis coach

PA Auckland The former English Davis Cup coach, Mark Cox, says he is highly unlikely to accept any last-minute offers from Auckland tennis officials to remain in New Zealand.

Cox is well into negotiations to return to the coaching scene in England after New Zealand tennis officialdom failed to find a position for him. “I have a verbal agreement with some people back in England and I’m a man who doesn’t like to go back on his word,” Cox said yesterday amid reports of renewed attempts by the Auckland Association to find him a role.

The expert coach, aged 43, will fly to London in two weeks, where he will almost certainly seal the deal to return home. “The comments that are coming out of Auckland are basically the same comments that have

been around for some time,” he said.

“It’s different if somebody says ‘this is our final offer, take it or leave it.’ Then I have to look at it seriously. But right now everything is very hypothetical.”

Cox said he appreciated the fact that Auckland tennis officials were trying to find him a job but said that he could not remain in a state of “limbo” any longer after having been in New Zealand since last August. Meanwhile, New Zealand’s highest-ranked women’s player, Belinda Cordwell, has joined the chorus of leading players expressing dismay that Kiwi tennis officials have let Cox slip through their fingers. Cordwell paid out of her own pocket to spend a week under Cox’s guidance shortly before her recent successful campaign in Australia.