Tennis: Cash looks to set up league in Europe

A consortium including the former Wimbledon champion, Pat Cash, is trying to establish a European City League. Cash and his colleagues want to establish teams to represent major cities in Europe.

The former British Davis Cup player John Feaver, now the LTA Events and Communications Director, believes the idea may be ill-conceived, however. "I would think that players ranked between one and 100 would hardly be interested," he said. "They are all making so much cash these days they are all after rankings rather than money."

Two months after reaching the fourth round of the US Open, Andre Agassi has elected to play in a Challenger tournament. Agassi requested and received a wild card to play in the Luxor Las Vegas-USTA Challenger next week.

Challenger tournament fields are usually comprised of players ranked below No 100 in the world. The former world No 1, eighth at the beginning of the year, is currently No 139.

Last week, Agassi received a wild card into the Australian Open in January, and Paul McNamee, the Australian Open tournament director, said: "For a player of his level to go back to the small tournaments, the minor league if you like, is quite incredible. Andre realises he needs to get some matches under his belt, and hopefully that means he will be better for it when he gets here."

Serena Williams, the younger sister of this year's beaten US Open finalist Venus Williams, upset the Russian ranked No 27 in the world, Elena Likhovtseva, 6-3, 7-5, in the first round of the Ameritech Cup women's tournament in Chicago. She was due to play Iva Majoli late last night.