Seeds and draw announced for 2023 Davis Cup qualifiers, Italy and Spain get Finals wild cards

Fognini Berrettini Davis Cup 2022 (AI / Reuters / Panoramic)

November 27, 2022

The 2023 Davis Cup qualifiers draw, which will round out the 16-team Finals field, was announced on Sunday morning. A total of 24 teams will compete in 12 head-to-head matches in early February, with the winner of each tie advancing to the Davis Cup Finals group stage in September.

The 12 victorious countries will join Australia, Canada, Italy, and Spain in the Finals. Australia and Canada qualified by reaching this year’s championship match, while the ITF and Kosmos Tennis announced on Sunday that Italy and Spain were the two wild-card recipients.

These are the 12 matchups in February that will determine the remaining spots (teams in bold have home-court advantage; seeds are in parentheses):

– (1) Croatia vs. Austria
– (2) France vs. Hungary
– (3) United States vs. Uzbekistan
– (4) Germany vs. Switzerland
– (5) Great Britain vs. Colombia
– (6) Serbia vs. Norway
– (7) Kazakhstan vs. Chile
– (8) Belgium vs. Korea Rep.
– (9) Sweden vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina
– (10) Netherlands vs. Slovakia
– (11) Argentina vs. Finland
– (12) Czech Republic vs. Portugal

Unlike in the Davis Cup Finals, where best-of-three ties feature only two singles matches and one doubles rubber, the qualifying round uses the old format. A three-day event includes two singles matches, a doubles match the next day, and finally two more singles matches for an overall best-of-five tie.

Italy was a semi-finalist this year, beating the United States in the quarters before falling to eventual champion Canada. Spain, most recently the champion in 2019, was without both Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz and lost to Croatia in the quarter-finals.