ATP Cup organisers apologise after playing Romanian national anthem for Moldovan team

Opening match between Moldova and Belgium was overshadowed by a national anthem blunder – but it’s hardly the first to happen in tennis

The wrong national anthem was played before Moldova's ATP Cup clash with Belgium (EPA)

Organisers of the ATP Cup have been forced into an embarrassing apology after playing the Romanian national anthem for Moldova before their encounter against Belgium on Friday.

Moldova opened their account with a 3-0 whitewash defeat against Belgium in the day’s opening session, with Steve Darcis defeating Alexander Cozbinov, David Goffin beating Radu Albot and the team of Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen seeing off Albot and Cozbinov in the match-ending doubles.

But the encounter was overshadowed by the embarrassing error that saw the Moldovan team stand for their national anthem, only for an unfamiliar one to ring out and leave them standing there with bemused expressions on their face.

"At the start of the Moldova v Belgium match we mistakenly played the wrong national anthem for Moldova," the ATP said in a statement.

"We are sincerely sorry and have apologised personally to Team Moldova."

Moldova were one of the last nations to qualify for the inaugural tournament, which has already had to cope with the near-by bushfires that have ravaged New South Wales in recent weeks.

It is not the first time that such a blunder has been made in the sport, having suffered a similar scenario in 2017 when a banned verse of the German national anthem that dates back to the second world war was played ahead of their Fed Cup quarter-final against the United States.

The same happened 17 years ago ahead of the 2003 Davis Cup final when Spain’s pre-civil war republican anthem was played ahead of the match against Australia, which prompted then-sports minister Juan Antonio Gomez-Angulo to protest furiously from the stands and force the opposition’s captain John Fitzgerald to issue a public apology.