Davis Cup preparations sluggish but effective, Maginley says

The Antigua & Barbuda Tennis Association (ABTA) may have to apply unconventional methods when selecting the country’s final Davis Cup team for the opening leg of the tournament, scheduled to serve off in June.
This is according to former national player and the individual charged with assembling the national team, John Maginley, who said that more than 90 per cent of the players targeted for the competition are based outside of Antigua & Barbuda.
“We have a challenge where all the players are off island, except for CJ [Cordell Williams Jr] but we have been keeping track of them in terms of who is playing, who is involved … but in the meantime, we are working on other things,” he said.
“We are going to Uruguay so we are going to need visas, hotel accommodation, airlines and those sort of things,” he added. 
According to the former sports minister, it would have been ideal to have the best players compete for spots on the team via a local competition. He added, however, that the association has been following those players earmarked as possible members of the team.
“Most people would say, ‘have trials’, but how are we going to have trials when none of the players are here, bearing the cost of bringing them home because they are not pros? We’ve been writing to all the players, asking them to show us their interest, tell us what tournaments they are playing, what has been your results in events coming up and the selection committee to look at all this criteria but having trials is a real challenge,” Maginley said. 
President of the tennis association, Cordell Williams, echoed Maginley’s sentiments, stating that the body is simply not in a financial position to fly so many players home.
“We don’t have the money to say we are going to bring home everybody and have a playoff on a hard court, because when we go to Uruguay, we will be playing on clay courts which are slower. So we are just trying to follow all of our players — seeing what level they are playing, what court they are playing on and what their records look like — and then we will make a final decision,” he said.
Antigua & Barbuda Tennis Association has a May 15 deadline to submit a four-member team to the International Tennis Federation (ITF).