The WTA rankings have been frozen since March 16th, when tennis was put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, and now the tour has released a solution as to how the players will be ranked when schedule resumes on August 3rd, proposing a so called “Better of 2019 and 2020” point model.
Before the pandemic, the WTA standings were based on a 52-week system, taking into account results from a player’s best 16 tournaments for singles and 11 for doubles. With the outbreak canceling all tennis tournaments since mid-March, the WTA decided to freeze the rankings, so the traditional 52-week window has been extended.
Now that the tour is about to resume, the WTA took into consideration various factors, including the provisional 2020 revised calendar and travel restrictions, and the decision has been made that the revised ranking system will take into account a player’s best 16 results in singles and best 11 results in doubles based on the points earned between March 2019 through December 2020.
The “Better of 2019 and 2020” rule basically means that a player will be awarded whichever is the higher number of points when she has competed in the same event twice during the above-mentioned period. Of course, no tournament can be counted twice in a player’s ranking breakdown, so tour-level points added in 2020 will drop after the event is scheduled to be played again in 2021 or after 52 weeks, whichever is earlier.
When it comes to qualifying for the Shiseido WTA Finals Shenzhen, a player’s 16-best results from 2020 tournaments will count in singles and 11-best results will count in doubles.
