Team Spain Captain Roig Excited To Start Playing At ATP Cup

Ahead of Spain’s first match at the ATP Cup on Saturday against Georgia in Group F action, team captain Francisco Roig shared his thoughts on getting the team ready for battle.

My experience as captain of the Spanish ATP Cup team after a few days in Perth has been very positive.

The main thing over these days has been organising the schedules for the training sessions because we have five players on the team. It’s something you have to start thinking about the day before. If you leave it until the night, you’re too late. You have to reserve the court time, manage the press side of things and the player obligations. We have everything scheduled, but you have to organise the training sessions for the five players and take each of their individual preferences into account.

It’s true that you don’t have to make many decisions later because the top two-ranked players have the right to play in singles and it’s up to them. The place where you can intervene is in the doubles, where there is more of an opportunity to play with a strategy.

We’ve trained really well and the atmosphere is very good, as it always is on the Spanish team. From day to day, the ATP Cup is similar to the team competitions we are familiar with, but it’s different than what we are used to on the ATP Tour, where everyone does their own thing. Some days we’ve gone to dinner together as a team, but on other days it’s depended on their individual schedules.

The reality is that we are well-prepared. On top of that, we have a favourable draw. We’re going to train for doubles tomorrow and the team is very excited to take to the court and play.

Even though I’m the captain, I’m also really going to rely on the players’ coaches, as we did this week in training sessions. Rafael Nadal is my player. With Roberto Bautista Agut, I’ll have his coach, Pepe Vendrell, by my side so I can tell him anything I might see. There will be a lot of communication because we’ll all be together on the bench.

There’s not long left now until our opener, so we’re going to play training matches today in competition conditions. One will be between Pablo Carreno Busta and Feliciano Lopez, and then another with Albert Ramos-Vinolas and [Russian] Teymuraz Gabashvili. These matches are very good because they are real matches with an umpire and ball boys.

I am fully confident that they will all be ready for when we start on Saturday against Georgia.