The coach of former Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina has accused the WTA of failing to communicate their rules regarding performance byes.
At this week’s Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, a rule is in place where players are awarded a bye in the first round based on their recent results on the Tour instead of their ranking. Therefore Guadalajara Open champion Maria Sakkari and semi-finalist Caroline Garcia have been awarded byes despite being ranked lower than Rybakina who missed out on getting one.
“Thank you for changing the rules [at the] last moment,” Rybakina recently wrote in an Instagram story on top of a screenshot of the Tokyo draw. “Great decisions as always @wta.”
The use of performance bye’s is nothing new in the sport and they have been in the official rulebook since 2009 when WTA Premier events (now called WTA 1000’s) were introduced. Furthermore, doubles player Nicole Melichar-Martinez has challenged Rybakina’s claim of a last-minute introduction of the policy on X (formerly known as Twitter) by saying that it was outlined in the tournament fact sheet.
Nevertheless, Rybakina’s mentor has also vented his frustration on social media. Stefano Vukov claims that there is no official definition provided by the governing body of women’s tennis and argues that a player’s ranking should be taken into account regarding performance. Although his player has failed to win back-to-back matches at her two most recent tournaments in Cincinnati and the US Open.
“Just to make things clear, there is no explanation of what a performance bye is. What does this mean? Do we add byes to help performing players? Or do we take away ranking earned byes? And isn’t ranking itself a sign of performance? Last year we came from a final in Europe and played in Japan 2 days later and performance byes nowhere to be found,” Vukov wrote on Instagram.
“The issue is always the same lack of communication. This will also apply from Tokyo 500 to Beijing 1000 next week. 4 performance byes will be awarded.” He added.
Vukov, who has coached Rybakina since 2019, has also suggested that players who have secured their place in the WTA Finals are only playing some tournaments because they face the risk of being fined if they chose not to. He also took a swipe at the WTA’s ‘terrible’ marketing department over their decision to post on social media that Rybakina had qualified for the year-end championships days after she had done so.
“We need transparency. All players need to understand what is going on. Stop blaming players for mistakes made by the system itself,” he concluded.
Rybakina has since pulled out of playing Tokyo this week but has insisted that her reason for doing so was because of an injury and has noting to do with her recent criticism.
“The WTA topic is another topic, on which I have my opinions and will clearly voice them in future.” She concluded.
