Andy Murray hopes fans will get behind new-look Davis Cup finals as ticket sales struggle

Britain’s greatest player Andy Murray has expressed a hope that people will get behind the new-look Davis Cup finals, which begin on Monday with an opening ceremony at Madrid’s Caja Magica.

Speaking on Sunday night, Murray said that he respected Gerard Pique – the Barcelona footballer who is the face of the new event – for “trying to do something new and different ... I think there’s some people that seem to be hoping it doesn’t go well, but I hope that it’s a big success. Because, if it is, that’s fantastic for tennis.”

Yet the organisers admitted a fortnight ago that ticket sales have been sluggish for certain sessions, especially the morning ones. To take an example, the Telegraph understands that – by the end of last week – only around 90 seats had been sold for Serbia v Japan at 11am on Wednesday.

Overall, 66 per cent of the available tickets are understood to remain available, although Spain’s own matches against Russia and Croatia have both sold out on the biggest of the three arenas, which seats more than 12,000 fans.

British fans have travelled in numbers, so that their two group ties – against the Netherlands on Wednesday and Kazakhstan the following day – have shifted more than 3,000 tickets between them, the largest show of interest from any visiting nation.

The fact that Murray is back in the team, playing his first Davis Cup matches for three years, is a major draw. For the first time since his debut campaign in 2005, he will be the team’s No 2 singles player, because his comeback from major hip surgery in January has only lifted him to No 125 in the world so far.

Murray’s comment about “people hoping it doesn’t go well” might apply to certain executives at the ATP Tour, who are holding their own rival team competition – the ATP Cup – in January.