Tenisplace.ro Forum

Wimbledon champion Andy Murray will play for Bangkok in what will be a four-team International Premier Tennis League later this year.

Some of the biggest names in tennis will take part in the new competition following Sunday's player auction in Dubai, which will be home to one of the franchises. Singapore, Bangkok and Mumbai are the others.

Kuala Lumpur had also been expected to play host to a team but was nowhere to be seen when organisers revealed the outcome of Sunday's meeting.

Murray will be joined on the Bangkok team by Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Victoria Azarenka, among others.

Men's world number one Rafael Nadal will play for Mumbai, while his female equivalent, Serena Williams, has been snapped up by Singapore. Novak Djokovic is the star name on Dubai's roster.

Organisers said just under US$24million had been spent by the teams on the 28 players sold but details of how that split down were not revealed.

Neither is it known how often the leading stars such as Murray and Nadal will actually play. Murray had previously said he was happy to play some but not all the matches but whether the smaller format will change his view remains to be seen.

All four teams will compete in one of the cities over a three-day period before moving onto the next. The format will see a total of 24 matches played, with the first on November 28 and the last on December 13, making it a shorter season than originally planned. A full fixture list has yet to be announced.

Team owners are still able to add to their squads with a maximum of 10 players allowed.

A total of 70 players had put their names forward for the auction. Australian Open champion Stanislas Wawrinka, David Ferrer and Agnieszka Radwanska were among those not to be signed.

It had previously been announced that each match will made up of a men's singles, a women's singles, a men's doubles, a mixed doubles and a legends singles - one set of each with no ad scoring. A tie-break will be played if the score reaches 5-5. The match winner will be decided by total games won by each team, ensuring that every game counts.