The decision to exclude Russian and Belarusian tennis players undermines the integrity of the ranking and the agreement on the mechanism that regulates the rankings. With this explanation, the ATP, and later also the WTA women’s counterpart, announced “with great regret” that it will have to remove the points from Wimbledon 2022, if things between now and June 27, the start date of the third slam. seasonal, should not change. A decision that was in the air, but no less irrepressible, especially because it affects the totem of world tennis, the oldest tournament in the world, the most coveted, the richest, which in these conditions will be practically an exhibition. A choice that the All England Club, which organizes the event, defined “disproportionate”, expressing its “profound disappointment”. The All England club said they made “the only possible decision” given the position taken by the London government to limit Russia’s global influence after the invasion of Ukraine, and they complied with the ban. “We are deeply sorry for the impact of this decision on the people affected – reads the note -. We believe that they are disproportionate in the context of the exceptional and extreme circumstances of this situation, which damage all players”. The players will not even have Wimbledon 2021 points left, explains the ATP on its official website. The points earned last year, in fact, “will come out of the rankings as the rules require at the end of the 52 weeks from last year’s event. So in the 2022 ranking the players will not have any points referring to the Wimbledon tournament”. A double joke for the participants, who will pay for the choices of the organizers and the British Federtennis (LTA) to exclude Russians and Belarusians, interpreting in the most extreme way the guidelines of the London Government for sports federations to ‘strike’ on all fronts Moscow and Minsk for the war on Ukraine. According to the ATP, it was enough for the athletes to sign up as neutral, without denouncing the Russian regime but avoiding expressing support for the invasion. The extreme choice of the ATP remains limited to Wimbledon and not to the other ATP tournaments on the calendar in Great Britain (such as Queen’s or Eastbourne), as although they are also closed to Russians and Belarusians, these athletes have at the same time available other tournaments which take part. Wimbledon, on the other hand, is on the calendar by itself and therefore, atp underlines, compromising the integrity of Championship registrations puts the entire ranking mechanism at risk.
Source: Ansa
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