The USTA coaching staff is upset that American Alex Bogomolov Jr. has decided to try and play Davis Cup for Russia. Sources told TENNIS.com that the USTA has invested a substantial sum in Bogomolov, including direct financial aid, travel expenses and years of coaching.
The 28-year-old has lived in Florida since 1992, was a junior player on a number of U.S. travel teams and also frequently worked out at the USTA National Training Center in Boca Raton, Florida. It is estimated that Bogomolov received at least $50,000 in direct financial support as well as hundreds of hours of free coaching. That money and coaching time could have gone to another player.
TENNIS.com has also learned that Bogomolov has already submitted an application to the International Tennis Federation (ITF) to ask that he be allowed to play for Russia.
Davis Cup rules traditionally stated that if a player is eligible to represent more than one country, the national association that wants to select him must apply to the International Tennis Federation six months before the tie and await a ruling from the Davis Cup Committee. That rule has been changed to a three-month wait, but it is unclear whether that rule has gone into effect yet, or whether it will start next year.
The ITF could ask Bogomolov to wait three years before he can play for Russia. Part of his fate might rest with the USTA, which has yet to decide whether it will rubber stamp his request, ask the ITF to impose the three-year waiting period, or ask him to reimburse them financially in order to gain an immediate release. The ITF will rule on Bogomolov's case at the Davis Cup final in Seville, Spain in early December.
Interestingly, as it stands today, Bogomolov, ranked No. 36, would be on the U.S. Olympic team as the nation’s fourth highest-ranked player, but he will not be allowed to play for Russia in the 2012 Olympics in London because Olympic rules state that a player has to make himself available for Davis Cup the year prior to the Olympics (as well as the Olympic year) and Bogomolov didn't do so in 2011.
The son of a famous Russian teaching pro, Bogomolov moved to South Florida when he was 11. His older sister Katia (a former All-American at the University of Miami), younger brother Boris and mother Natalie had to make a number of adjustments when Alex Sr. decided in 2003 to move back to Russia because he didn’t like the work ethic of the juniors he was teaching in Florida. Bogomolov Jr. has said that his relationship with his father has been strained, but apparently they repaired it during the last two weeks, while Alex Jr. has been playing tournaments in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
“I haven’t seen [my dad] in three years,” Bogomolov told TENNIS.com last summer. "But it's tougher on my brother because he’s a teenager and trying to go to college and grow up without a male figure, so I had to be there. [My father and I] speak on a good win basis, but we never speak after a loss.”
Bogomolov is hoping to play for Russia when it plays Austria in the first round of the Davis Cup on Feb. 10-12, 2012. He has never been asked to play for the U.S. team.
"It was my dream (to play for Russia) and I want to finish my career playing for Russia," Bogomolov said in St. Petersburg.—Matt Cronin