ATP considering a ranking freeze to protect Russian and Belarusian players from the Wimbledon ban
Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev, Aslan Karatsev | Wimbledon
Ever since the announcement of Wimbledon authorities banning Russian and Belarusian players has emerged, ATP have started thinking about ways to protect the ranking of the banned players who won’t be able to feature in this year’s Championships and other events in the United Kingdom.
The ATP officials will meet next week to discuss various matters including th ranking protection of the banned players. There are rumours that ATP officials are already thinking of bringing a compensatory ranking-point scheme, something that they implemented during the time of COVID-19 disruption to the tours.
ATP have condemned the decision taken by the Wimbledon authorities and now they want to come up with a ranking system that will help the players not lose rankings as they will miss out on all the action in the United Kingdom including the Wimbledon and several other events. ATP feels that the decision from All England Club have victimised the Russian and the Belarusian players.
The Belarusian Tennis Federation have also shown complete support for ATP’s initiative as they have already signalled to take the legal route against the Wimbledon authorities for imposing a ban which they feel will incite hate and intolerance on the ethnic grounds.
ATP all set to freeze the ranking of players banned from participating in the Wimbledon and other events in the UK
ATP to consider a rankings freeze for the players who won’t be able to participate at the Championships due to the ban. Players such as Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and others will lose a massive amount of points for missing the events hence ATP is coming with some solution to safeguard their rankings. The All England Club for now is not looking to soften their stance as ATP officials will sit at the Mutua Madrid Open next week to discuss matters such as these.
There will also be questions on stricter sanctions on the United Kingdom-based events. Some rumours suggest that the UK based events may get stripped of ranking points. A ranking compensation, partly based on past results, is a more likely outcome.
Some people claimed that how can players lose ranking and not make it to the main draw of some event just because some of them were not been able to compete at certain tournaments. Hence ATP are to follow the ranking free method, one that they followed during the Covid disruption. A complex change was made to the usual 12-month ranking system to keep points on the computer for at least double the normal time.
The players who will be worse affected in terms of ranking loss by the Wimbledon ban are World No.2 Daniil Medvedev, World No.8 Andrey Rublev, Karen Khachanov and Aslan Karatsev. Among the WTA category, there are top talents such as World No.4 Aryna Sabalenka, who was also a semifinalist at the Wimbledon last year. Then Russia No.1 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and two time Grand Slam winner Victoria Azarenka, who even qualified for the semifinals in Wimbledon twice.
Atrayo Bhattacharya
(193 Articles Published)