The start of the ATP Cup — and with it, the ATP Tour season — is just four days away, and players in Sydney are ramping up the intensity.

Several No. 1 players were practising on the grounds of the Sydney Olympic Park Tennis Centre on Monday, fine-tuning their games in preparation for the start of the 24-country competition. 2017 Nitto ATP Finals runner-up David Goffin and former World No. 12 Borna Coric sparred on one court, with the likes of Bulgarian No. 1 and captain Grigor Dimitrov, Polish No. 1 Hubert Hurkacz and plenty of others hitting the courts in hot and humid conditions as well.

Goffin has long been excited for this new and innovative event, saying in October, “I’m very curious to see [it], that’s why I’m very excited. On paper it looks amazing. A great place, great stadiums, it looks really good. So I’m really excited to see and hopefully it will be a really nice event.”

The Belgian No. 1 is ecstatic not just to begin his season, but to try to make his country and teammates proud.

“For me it’s nice because you play another time for your country. It’s something that I like. I always love to represent Belgium and to play for friends, for the team, for Belgium,” Goffin said on Monday. “It’s great, and especially competition like that, a big one to start the year with a new format, it’s something big and we have a lot of great matches to start the season. I think it’s great.”

One of the highlights of the ATP Cup is that there are a maximum of 750 singles ATP Ranking points at stake and a maximum of 250 ATP Doubles Ranking points available.

“First of course you play for your country, and if at the end you have some ATP points, it’s great also for your [ATP] Ranking,” Goffin said. “So you will play every match and try to win every point, every game, to win some matches for your country.”

Belgium’s first match will be on Friday at 10am local time against Moldova. Goffin will face Moldovan No. 1 Radu Albot, against whom he owns a 3-0 FedEx ATP Head2Head advantage.