Paolini discussed the crowd<\/a> at this year\u2019s event, which took place in Shenzhen in China, with the tournament finals having a different host every year. <\/p>\nJohnson doesn\u2019t think that is ideal and has called for the matches to be played in a home and away format, much like the old Federation Cup used to be. <\/p>\n
He said on the Nothing Major podcast: \u201cIt was tricky because it\u2019s the same week as Laver Cup. They are doing a one-week neutral site venue in Shenzhen. The neutral site for Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup is horrible. Bring back the home and away ties!<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot stress that enough. I will not enjoy these events until they have the home crowd feel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty bad, I think. But that being said, it\u2019s no surprise that Italy and the USA were in the final.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two best teams, in my opinion, on paper, the most accomplished teams, and it was a surprising result. I thought the US were going to get that done. Italy had Paolini play singles and Cocciaretto. She beat Emma Navarro in the first match, which set the tone, which was a bit surprising.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmma had played very well in all her matches in Shenzhen and gone undefeated up until the finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if nerves got the better of her in the moment, but unfortunately, they lost both singles, so it didn\u2019t come down to a doubles, which I think would have been fun to play for a Billie Jean King Cup final.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough for Coach Davenport not to get the win. They have not won since 2018, so it\u2019s a bummer. I think it\u2019s a bummer for the men to have it in Bologna, Italy, coming up, and it\u2019s an even bigger bummer for the women to have their final in Shenzhen, China.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t think that\u2019s right for them or for any team atmosphere for somebody not to have a home tie in a finals match. I think it\u2019s crazy.<\/p>\n
Johnson won\u2019t like Billie Jean King Cup schedule<\/p>\n
The bad news for Johnson is that the next two Billie Jean King Finals are scheduled to take place in Shenzhen. <\/p>\n
However, he does have a point regarding potential tweaks for the event in the future. <\/p>\n
Playing in a competition that sees players represent their countries should be all about home crowds cheering on their own players. <\/p>\n
Although the crowds have by no means been bad in Shenzhen, they\u2019re not going to be as partisan as if one leg was played in the United States and the other in Italy. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to understand why they choose to have all of the finals matches under one roof, but Johnson definitely throws up some food for thought when it comes to the future of the competition. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Billie Jean King Cup has finished for another year, with Italy celebrating another successful campaign. Jasmine Paolini…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,52591,747,2637],"class_list":{"0":"post-163521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-steve-johnson","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-wta"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Photo by Lintao Zhang\/Getty Images for Billie Jean King CupSteve Johnson calls for major Billie Jean King Cup change<\/p>\n