Jannik Sinner says what he does not like about the backlash he has received for skipping the Davis Cup this year

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Jannik Sinner deciding to skip the Davis Cup this year has been a big talking point.

Sinner helped Italy win the Davis Cup in both 2023 and 2024 after they had not won the title for 47 years.

Many were expecting them to be one of the big favourites for the title once again, but their hopes were hit after Sinner decided he would not be playing the Davis Cup Finals this year.

After it was confirmed that the world number one would not be representing his country, Sinner received a lot of backlash for his decision, and he has now explained his decision in detail.

Jannik Sinner reveals when he made the decision to withdraw from the Davis Cup

Sinner gave a short response to the backlash at the Vienna Open a couple of weeks ago, before he went on to win the title.

Now, after Sinner won the Paris Masters to climb back to the top of the ATP rankings, he has spoken in an interview about withdrawing from the Davis Cup in an interview with Sky Sports Italy, as reported by
La Gazzetta dello Sport.

In this interview, Sinner was asked about the real reason why he decided to withdraw from this year’s Davis Cup, to which he suggested that he actually made the decision after winning last year’s event.

“At the end of the season, with all the pressure, the matches played, the emotions, both after a win and after a defeat, it takes a long time to put everything back together,” answered Sinner. “And especially at the end of the season, a week is really a long time for us athletes.

“If you have an extra week of preparation, besides having an extra week of vacation, you arrive at preparation stronger, more motivated, with more energy and above all with more desire. We play tennis every day and so it’s normal that, sometimes, you don’t have much desire… but if you start the training weeks seven days earlier, because it’s not like you start at full speed from the first day, those are very important, especially for the start of the season but also in the long term and for injury prevention.

“So for me this year there was not a single doubt that this was the right choice [not playing the Davis Cup final]. Instead, last year was different: last year I didn’t play in Paris, I said ‘I want to play the Davis Cup’ and they held me back a bit, on my team, but I said ‘No, this year I want to I wanted to play because I promised [Matteo] Berrettini I would when we won in 2023.

“When he was there cheering us on and we won, I hugged him and said, ‘I promise we’ll win the next Davis Cup together, because you deserve it and we’re an incredible team,’ and we won. From then on, I had already decided that I definitely wouldn’t play in 2025.”

Jannik Sinner says what ‘no one’s talking about’ which he doesn’t like

There has been a lot of criticism towards Sinner for making this decision, particularly from former Italian players.

When responding to this backlash again, Sinner admitted that he did not like how people were not talking about the talent still on the Italian team, and claimed that they could still win the Davis Cup.

“The thing I personally don’t like is that we have an incredible team even without me, and no one’s talking about it,” said Sinner. “We have to do without the world number 26, who right now is [Luciano] Darderi.

“We can afford not to call the world number 26 in the Davis Cup because we have [Flavio] Cobolli, [Lorenzo] Musetti, and so many others: we have an incredible doubles team! We can win even like that, we still have Berrettini, so the chances of winning the Davis Cup are high.”

Italy still have two of their singles players for the Davis Cup this year ranked inside the top 22, as well as former Wimbledon finalist Matteo Berrettini, and the doubles pairing of Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori, who have reached three Grand Slam finals together.

While Sinner will not be playing at the Davis Cup this year, he does have one final tournament to play in 2025 at the ATP Finals in Turin.