Miami (AFP)
The ATP, which manages the professional tennis circuit (ATP Tour), will modify its classification system from August, the scheduled date for the resumption of tournaments after a five-month break due to the Covid-19 pandemic, extending the reference period from 12 to 22 months, she announced Monday.
Under the current system, ATP uses a player's eighteen best results over a 52-week period as the ranking basis. This period will be extended to 22 months, from March 2019 to December 2020, said ATP in a press release posted on its website.
Thus, a player who won a tournament in April 2019 and could not defend his 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 ATP Tour specifies to take this measure in order not to penalize players who have not been able to compete in an ATP tournament since March 16, the date of the circuit stoppage, the resumption of which is not scheduled before the month of August.
It was the Briton Andy Murray, former world N.1, who launched the idea last month of an adjustment of the ATP ranking, in order to ensure a certain fairness in a highly disturbed year.
According to him, there was a risk that the classification could become biased, and he had then suggested a sliding classification over two years.
The principle of assigning points every week and a weekly ranking published every Monday remains.
The ATP ranking has been frozen for the moment since March 16, a few days after the suspension of the ATP circuit due to coronavirus.
© 2020 AFP