The role of WTA’s ‘mandatory’ events is yet again under the limelight after a controversial ranking shift on Monday. Due to this new rule, the Polish superstar, Iga Swiatek lost 120 ranking points and as a result, Aryna Sabalenka overtook her top spot with 9706 points. There’s a clear difference of 41 points between the two at the moment! Several fans have now started to criticize the WTA’s zero-point penalty rule, which allowed the Belarusian to take over Swiatek. Recently, American legend, Tracy Austin added more fuel to this controversy by sharing his opinion on the “big uptake” in the number of ‘mandatory’ tournaments.

According to the new rules released by the WTA, all the players need to play at least 6 WTA 500 events. It further says that if anyone fails to meet this then zero-pointers will be applied for each one missed. Iga Swiatek has played just two WTA 500 events this season while Aryna Sabalenka has played four. Hence, due to the implications of zero-pointers Swiatek’s points have dropped from 9785 to 9665. While Sabalenka’s points reduced to 9706 from 9716. Now if both these players don’t take part at the Japan Open, Swiatek’s point will go down to 9470 and Sabalenka’s to 9641. Currently, the WTA stars are expected to play potentially 21 events a season. It includes 4 Grand Slam tournaments and then followed by 10 WTA 1000-level events.

Outside of these 14 high-level tournaments, top players are expected to play in a further 6 WTA 500-level tournaments. Then after these 20 tournaments, players are expected to play in the WTA Finals should they qualify. Speaking about this rule and Iga Swiatek dropping 120 points from the Miami Open, Tracy Austin said, “It’s very strange. Because Miami was in the spring. I think we’re trying to say that the WTA’s continuing Swiatek falling short of certain tournament quotas. So, what happened is after she lost in the QF of the US Open to Jessica Pegula, we know there was a coaching change. Broke up with Tomasz Wiktorowski and Iga needs a little bit of time to find her footing.”

During the same conversation at the Tennis Channel Live Podcast, the 61-year-old American tennis legend further added, “She (Swiatek) expects to play the WTA Finals but not meeting those quotas of certain tournament levels. Neither player played last week, but still, Sabalenka was so incredible in the last three-four months, won the AO and these three-four months have been so successful in winning three titles. She’s back to number one! So, she regained the number one ranking after Iga had it for 11 months.” Tracy Austin further claimed, “I think it’s just the way it has happened because it’s a pretty big uptake from 12 mandatory tournaments to 20 mandatory. And a lot of players complained of too much tennis.“

Several tennis bigwigs have been very vocal about the demanding tennis schedules in the last few months. With the growing number of mandatory tournaments, it becomes more difficult for the players to manage their schedules. We’ve seen Iga Swiatek bringing up this issue multiple times this season. Let’s check out some of those reactions from our favorite tennis stars.

“It makes tennis less fun” – Iga Swiatek shares her opinions on hectic tennis schedules

Previously during an interview, we heard Iga Swiatek taking a jibe at the WTA for tight scheduling. She said that she has been an advocate in saying that players shouldn’t be pushed to play more. “I think we have too many tournaments in the season. It makes tennis less fun for us. Obviously, I love playing in all these places, but it’s pretty exhausting. I don’t think it should be like that because we deserve to rest a little bit more.” After hearing this statement from Swiatek several tennis fans criticized her for complaining, while others understood the point she was trying to explain.

Recently, another tennis star, Sloane Stephens joined Swiatek to address this serious issue in the tennis world. According to Stephens, “Both tours ATP and WTA, is that you’re kind of forced to play, even when you’re probably not in the best mental capacity, you’re probably not the best physical shape, or you might be injured or whatever it is, and you just arrive because that’s what you’re supposed to do.“

Clearly, players aren’t too pleased with the way things have turned around over the last few months regarding the scheduling and the other stuff related to this. However, with the WTA Finals knocking on the door, Iga Swiatek will now look forward to forgetting all of these and keeping herself ready to pounce on the Belarusian ‘Tigress’, Aryna Sabalenka!