‘Someone who lost to the world No. 500’: After Davis Cup loss to India, bitter feud erupts in Dutch tennis

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2 min readFeb 14, 2026 04:54 PM IST

Griekspoor had been vocally critical about the Royal Dutch Lawn Tennis Association (KNLTB) and had refused to join the Netherlands team for the tie. (Photo: ATP Tour)

The 3-2 win over the Netherlands in the Davis Cup Qualifiers may have been one of the greatest moments for India in their tennis history but for the Dutch, it seems to have exposed some fissures between the players themselves. The Netherlands had travelled to India without their top two players Tallon Griekspoor and Botic Van de Zandschulp. Griekspoor had been vocally critical about the Royal Dutch Lawn Tennis Association (KNLTB) and had refused to join the Netherlands team for the tie.

Jesper De Jong, who led the team in the absence of Griekspoor and Van de Zandschulp and lost the decisive singles tie to Dhakshineswar Suresh, said on the sidelines of the ongoing Rotterdam 500 event that Griekspoor had “embarassed” the country. “You read that we played with a weakened team. I felt it was disrespectful. You shouldn’t embarrass your country,” he said.

“I don’t speak to Tallon anyway. If someone treats his teammates like that, I don’t need to give them a hug.”

De Jong said that while things need to improve, it wasn’t so bad that Griekspoor needed to refuse to play in the tie. “Does he stand for Dutch tennis? I think I was there, and I was in the Netherlands with the others who were there for Dutch tennis. I’m certainly not pro-KNLTB; I also see things that are going wrong and need to be improved. But we were in the Davis Cup final just over a year ago, so are things that bad then? You shouldn’t overstate it,” he said.

Griekspoor didn’t mince his words while responding to De Jong. “He says I’m disrespecting the country, which is a bit rich coming from someone who lost to the world No. 500,” he is quoted as saying by Dutch website Nos. Suresh had been ranked 465 in the world at the time that he beat De Jong. “I’m not going to waste time and energy on people who are of no use to me, and that includes him.”

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