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World No. 6 Berdych ready to play in International Premier Tennis League

The competition, which is the brainchild of Indian doubles player Mahesh Bhupathi, is reportedly set to see marquee players like Rafael Nadal fetch up to $1m for one night’s work.

World number six Tomas Berdych has confirmed his services will be going under the hammer at the inaugural International Premier Tennis League (IPTL) auction here on Sunday.

The competition, which is the brainchild of Indian doubles player Mahesh Bhupathi, is reportedly set to see marquee players like Rafael Nadal fetch up to $1m for one night’s work.

Great Britain’s Andy Murray is also thought to be in negotiations with Bhupathi about his prospective involvement, although it is believed that 17-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer is not keen on this new initiative.

Victoria Azarenka, Agnieszka Radwanska and Caroline Wozniacki have been mooted as possible participants from the WTA Tour for the competition, which will run between November 28^th and December 20^th across five cities — Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai and Singapore.

One name definitively in the hat though is Berdych, who has high hopes for Bhupathi’s grand vision for the sport. “It’s a very big and ambitious plan, which I think is a good idea,” he said. “It’s something that can make our sport even more attractive and bring something extra to the players and basically to all of the fans around the world.

“I’m looking forward to it. I will be really glad if I’m going to become a part of it from the start. I like new ideas, so why not?

“I signed up for it when I was approached of course. I took the time to think about it in terms of what’s going to be the positive for me, what’s going to be the negative, how much of my time is it going to take and everything. I decided that I will commit to that. It’s a huge project.”