The New Zealand Fed Cup team has been banned from playing in 2012 by the ITF because of a last-minute withdrawal by Tennis New Zealand last February when top players Marina Erakovic and Sacha Jones were unavailable. Both were somewhat injured and Tennis New Zealand didn't want to pay the $50,000 fee to send an inexperienced team, the Sunday Star-Times reported.
Erakovic played the USTA Challenger in Midland, Michigan just a couple of days after Fed Cup finished and Tennis New Zealand’s CEO Steve Johns told the newspaper that injury was only part of the reason why she didn't compete. Tennis New Zealand thought that by pulling out it would only be automatically be relegated to Asia/Oceania Group II, but the ITF decided it would not allow the country to participate in January's event in Shenzen, China. "We have been stood down for a year. That is the penalty for pulling out at the late stage we did this year," Johns said. "We could have received a reasonably hefty fine for doing that, or been stood down. So we won't be competing in 2012 and will come back into the program in 2013."