Wimbledon pointless after Russians banned
The women’s and men’s professional tennis tours will not award ranking points for Wimbledon this year because of the All England Club’s ban on players from Russia and Belarus over the invasion of Ukraine, an unprecedented move that stands as a significant rebuke of the sport’s oldest Grand Slam tournament.
The WTA and ATP announced their decisions yesterday, little more than a month before play begins at Wimbledon on June 27.
In a technical sense, this renders the event an exhibition, because there are no ranking points at stake.
“The ability for players of any nationality to enter tournaments on merit, without discrimination, is fundamental to our tour,” the ATP said in a statement. “The decision by Wimbledon to ban Russian and Belarusian players from competing in the UK this summer undermines this principle and the integrity of the ATP ranking system.”
Saying it made this move “with great regret and reluctance”, the ATP added: “Our rules and agreements exist in order to protect the rights of players as a whole. Discrimination by individual tournaments is simply not viable on a tour that operates in more than 30 countries.”
WTA chairman Steve Simon said: “The WTA believes individual athletes participating in an individual sport should not be penalised or prevented from competing solely because of their nationalities or the decisions made by the governments of their countries.”
The All England Club expressed its “deep disappointment” at the removal of ranking points, calling the tours’ position “disproportionate in the context of the exceptional and extreme circumstances of this situation and the position we found ourselves in” and terming it “damaging to all players”.
The club reiterated the two main ways in which it previously defended the choice to bar Russians and Belarusians: It followed advice from the British government, and an unwillingness “to accept success or participation at Wimbledon being used to benefit the propaganda machine of the Russian regime, which, through its closely controlled media, has an acknowledged history of using sporting success to support a triumphant narrative to the Russian people.”
Among the prominent players affected by the ban are reigning US Open champion and world No 2 Daniil Medvedev, men’s No 7 Andrey Rublev, women’s No 7 Aryna Sabalenka, a Wimbledon semifinalist last year, and Victoria Azarenka, a former No 1 who has won the Australian Open title twice.
Medvedev and Rublev are from Russia; Sabalenka and Azarenka are from Belarus.
They are all eligible to compete at the French Open starting tonight, and Medvedev deflected questions about Wimbledon’s Russia policy.
When a reporter raised the possibility of legal action against the All England Club, perhaps via the Court of Arbitration for Sport, Medvedev said: “Me, personally, I won’t go to court.”
The US Tennis Association, which runs the US Open, has not announced a decision about players from Russia and Belarus; that tournament starts on August 30.