The ladies’s skilled tennis tour is contemplating whether or not to make modifications to its “frozen” rating system, adopted due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Key factors:
- The WTA ladies’s tennis tour permits gamers to depend factors from their high 16 outcomes since March 2019
- Nonetheless the boys’s ATP tour has introduced it’s returning to a 52-week system, and the WTA is now reviewing whether or not to comply with go well with
- Ladies’s world primary Ash Barty missed most of 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak, and could be prone to lose factors if the present “frozen” system is modified
If the Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation (WTA) decides to push forward with any change, it could effectively have an effect on Ash Barty, Australia’s present world primary.
WTA chief government Steve Simon stated in an announcement that the tour was “reviewing if any additional changes to the rankings course of will likely be made”.
Historically the principle ladies’s tour rankings are based mostly on a 52-week system, permitting gamers to take their finest 16 outcomes, with highest rating factors for the 4 grand slam tournaments, the WTA Finals and WTA Premier and Premier 5 occasions.
As issues stand, nevertheless, the WTA permits gamers to depend the factors from their high 16 event outcomes since March 2019.
AP: Christophe Ena
That permits somebody like Barty to keep away from being penalised for sitting out most of 2020 after the COVID-19 outbreak took maintain.
Barty, for instance, didn’t defend her 2019 title on the French Open in October, however nonetheless will get credit score for the earlier yr’s championship.
Proper now, she leads her nearest challenger — Australian Open winner Naomi Osaka — by 1,351 rankings factors, 9,186 to 7,835.
The ATP males’s tour introduced on Wednesday that it could tweak its rankings guidelines with an eye fixed to restoring the common 52-week system totally by August 2022.
The boys’s tour additionally stated it could add about $US5 million ($6.4 million) to prize cash being provided between now and June at some smaller tournaments by growing payouts that had been minimize to 50 per cent due to the pandemic.
As for WTA prize cash, Simon stated in his assertion: “Along with the over $US3 million ($A3.8 million) in reduction we supplied to gamers in 2020, the WTA has assisted each gamers and tournaments by subsidising 100 per cent of the onsite prize cash in 2021 via the utilisation of broadcast revenues, bonus pool re-allocations and central organisational funding as we really feel very strongly in supporting each of our members throughout these difficult instances.”
AP/ABC
