Seven months on from the Netherlands making history at the 2021 BNP Paribas World Team Cup in Sardinia, this year’s edition of the ITF’s flagship wheelchair tennis team event takes place at Vilamoura Tennis Academy in Portugal on 2-8 May.

Forty-four teams from 22 nations will vie for the men’s, women’s, quad and junior titles as the World Team Cup World Group reverts back to its more customary May slot on the ITF major events calendar.

While Vilamoura has previously hosted World Team Cup Qualification events in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021, this year Portugal becomes the 20th nation to host the World Group event since the first World Team Cup was held in the USA in 1985.

Twenty-eight nations earned direct entry for the 2022 World Team Cup following their results in Sardinia, Italy, last October, while a further four men’s teams, four women’s teams and two quad teams earned their places in the line-up when this year’s Qualification event took place in Turkey last month.

What is the format?

Each of the men’s, women’s, quad and junior events will start with a series of round-robin pool contests before the top finishers in the round-robin pools will go forward to the knockout semi-finals.

The men's event begins with four pools of four nations, while the women's event begins with four pools of three nations. The quad event and the junior event will both feature two pools of four nations. 

The position each team finishes in their round-robin pool will have a bearing on what final placing they will have the chance to play for as the week progresses. That guarantees great excitement from the first day of competition and while the top performing teams will go forward to play for the championship trophies and medals, other teams will be focused on trying to earn a final placing that will ensure direct entry for the 2023 World Team Cup.    

Can Netherlands repeat 2021 success?

Last October, Netherlands won the men’s, women’s and quad World Team Cup titles in Sardinia, becoming the first nation to win the three senior championship titles in the same year while Japan won the junior title.

This year, with the return of Shingo Kunieda to the Japanese men’s team and the prospect of 15-year-old world junior No.1 Tokito Oda, the men’s singles world No.9, making his senior team debut, Japan appear to have an outstanding chance of regaining the title they last won in 2018.

Oda turns 16 on 8 May, the day that the men’s final is scheduled, and a Japanese victory would be the perfect birthday present for the teenager whose progress has captivated the sport over the last 12 months.

Netherlands and Spain, last year’s finalists, field the same talented line-up of players as in 2021, with Tokyo Paralympic silver medallist Tom Egberink and Ruben Spaargaren leading the Dutch challenge and Daniel Caverzaschi and Martin de la Puente looking to earn Spain a return to the title decider.

In Alfie Hewett and Gustavo Fernandez, Great Britain and Argentina are also set to benefit from the talents of their top-ranked players but thereafter are missing other personnel who were key to past successes. France are also without the services of key players, but the competition for the medals is likely to be as intriguing as ever.     

Anything but a repeat of last year’s Dutch victories in the women’s and quad events would be something of a shock, with Diede de Groot and Aniek van Koot again leading the Netherlands in the women’s event and Sam Schroder and Niels Vink going into the quad event having both occupied the world No. 1 ranking this season.

Japan have strong medal possibilities in both the women’s and quad events, along with the USA, while France, Germany and Great Britain are among several nations who could be contending for a medal in the women’s event at the end of the week.

ITF Programme partner the Johan Cruyff Foundation again supports the junior event, in which Australia and Japan denied Great Britain the gold medal in 2019 and 2021, respectively. While the make up of all three teams is different in 2022, they are strong medal contenders once more, along with the Netherlands, with Argentina and Brazil hoping to give a good account of themselves.  

How can I watch the 2022 BNP Paribas World Team Cup and when are the finals?

The 2022 World Team Cup will be available to watch via the live stream broadcast on ITF social media channels, with details of additional live streams provided during the daily coverage across the ITF website and other channels.

Subject to change, the quad final and the women’s final are scheduled to take place on Saturday 7 May, with the men’s final and the junior final both scheduled for Sunday 8 May.