Jamaica’s tennis players Nicholas Gore and Jeremy Miller said Tennis Jamaica should have used a national trial to fill the fifth and final spot for the country’s team for next month’s Davis Cup Group Two play-offs against Estonia.

Gore and Miller, along with Jacob Bicknell, have all been shortlisted for the fifth and final spot for Jamaica’s team for the play-offs championship, which will be held at the Erica Bell Tennis Centre in Kingston on February 4-5.

Blaise Bicknell, who is the country’s top player, along with Rowland “Randy” Phillips, John Chin, and Daniel Azar, have already been selected for the team.

Tennis Jamaica technical committee is now reviewing a reccommendation from the country’s Davis Cup Coach Mel Spence as to who should be given the final spot on Jamaica’s team. This announcement is scheduled to be made this week.

The 21-year-old Gore, who is currently attending the University of Delaware in the United States, said that he is very optimistic about securing the final spot on the team, but having a national trial would have made it much easier for Tennis Jamaica to decide on the final person.

“I think it [trial] would have been good, but at the end of the day, it is not up to me,” said Gore. “I think that whatever format that they used, whether it is a round robin, matches or a draw, or even a training camp, I think it would have been good,” he said.

“I hope that I will be able to make it, and like I have said that I have prepared well for it before and I have been training a lot and I have been playing some matches this past semester, and so it would have been a great plus to get on the team, but it is not up to me,” Gore said.

Miller, who is a former student of the University of Technology, Jamaica, echoed the semtiments of Gore that trial should have been used to select the final spot for the Davis Cup team.

“I think if they would have done a trial, then it would have been more clear-cut,” said the 31-year-old Miller.

“With them not having trials, it feels a little bit more up in the air, but that is what they [Tennis Jamaica] wanted to do, they just wanted to select somebody for the spot and so you just have to wait and see,” he said.

However, Spence said that all players were well aware that there would have been no national trials last year.

“There was a training camp in which they were a part and it was decided that there wasn’t going to be a trial,” said Spence. However, he added that he was not aware whose decision it was not to stage a trial.

Spence said Tennis Jamaica has a selection criteria, which speaks to 18 different things a player must satisfy in order to be selected for the national team.

“The criteria speaks to 18 different things as to what you need to satisfy to make that spot…so there is no hiding of anything, and it is plain as day,” he said.

When the Observer reached out to a few executive members of Tennis Jamaica on Tuesday for comment, they all declined, including President John Azar.