The Tennis Players Association (WTA) will modify its calendar, and its classification system, frozen since March 16, to take into account the suspension of tournaments due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This announcement concerning the classification methodology comes three days after a similar decision by ATP, the homologous organization for men’s professional tennis. Under the current system, the WTA uses the player’s sixteen best singles and eleven best doubles results as a classification basis over a 52-week period. This period will be extended to 22 months, from March 2019 to December 2020, said the WTA in a statement posted on its website. Thus, a player who won a tournament in April 2019 and could not defend her points in the same tournament this year, will not lose them. However, if during the new 22-month reference period a player has played the same tournament twice (for example in September 2019 then in September 2020), only the best result of the two will be retained. The resumption of the WTA Tour, suspended since March 8 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, is scheduled for August 3 with the Palermo tournament. The WTA added two new events to the originally scheduled schedule: the Prague tournament, August 10-16, and the Kentucky tournament, August 10-17. The latter, which will be for the players the first competition on American soil, replaces the Washington tournament, generally contested at the same time as an ATP tournament. Contested on hard, it will serve as preparation for the US Open, scheduled from August 31 to September 13.
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