THE folly of the decision to re-cast the Davis Cup as a year-end tournament is borne out by injuries to five of Australia’s top six men.

Only Alex de Minaur, the top-ranked Australian, managed to play the last ATP tournament of his schedule to its conclusion.

Next year’s Davis Cup will be decided by an 18-nation tournament in Madrid, Spain from November 18-24, 2019.

The Davis Cup finale, for which teams qualify in home-and-away ties in February, was forced through by a majority of International Tennis Federation member nations in a contentious vote in August which did away with the Cup’s four weeks of annual competition and best-of-five set matches.

The 2019 finale would start the day after the ATP Finals in London contested by the top eight men.

Most of Australia’s best men were hampered by injuries which would have made it problematic if they would have been capable of playing in the third week of this month had Davis Cup been on offer in that week under the new format.

Top 40 players John Millman, with a back injury, and Matthew Ebden, with an undisclosed ailment, retired during the second set of matches at this week’s Paris Masters.

Nick Kyrgios (ranked No.38) and Bernard Tomic (85) put the cue in the rack for 2018 last month after Kyrgios withdraw from a tournament in Europe and Tomic retired from a qualifying match there.

Brisbane’s Jason Kubler, ranked No.115, pulled out of a Canberra Challenger this week with a knee injury and consulted a doctor about the best way to be near his best in the Australian summer.

Five of the top six Australian men, except Hopman Cup entrant Ebden, would be expected to contest this summer’s Brisbane International, which starts on December 31.

Millman was critical of a lack of consultation with the players by the ITF over the changes to the format of the Davis Cup prior to the August vote. He also joined de Minaur and team captain Lleyton Hewitt in expressing dissatisfaction at the loss of many of the competition’s traditional facets.

Novak Djokovic says that he would support the first ATP World Team Cup in Australia from December 27, 2019 rather than the revamped Davis Cup, which would finish just 33 days earlier.

Talks are ongoing between Tennis Australia and state governments, including Queensland’s, on financial support to have WTC ties played in their capital cities.

Alex Zverev, the most advanced of the under-25 brigade in men’s tennis, said he would not play for Germany in Davis Cup at the end of a long season.

Djokovic said last month that the timing of the 2019 Davis Cup finale was “really bad”.

“Between the two, I will prioritise the World Team Cup because that’s a competition of ATP,’’ Wimbledon and US Open champion Djokovic said.

“But also I think and I hope that there will be a larger discussion between the players to understand how we are going to approach these two competitions.

“Or hopefully we can make it to the point where we can have one big ‘Super World Cup’, if you want to call it (that), or whatever it is, because that’s the best thing for our sport.

“But the way it seems right now, we are going to have two at the moment.”