Protected rankings enable tennis gamers to return to main tournaments following time away from the game, normally due to damage.
They’re utilized by top-performing gamers to enter the primary draw or qualifying competitors of Grand Slams and different tournaments if their rating has dropped too low throughout their break day for them to be routinely eligible.
Entry to the primary draw of Grand Slams is decided by world rankings, with a cutoff round quantity 100. Protected rankings enable gamers who’ve fallen past this cutoff to enter immediately via the primary draw.
Protected rankings can’t be used to acquire a seeding, which means that gamers getting into Grand Slams this fashion could face high gamers earlier within the event.
Gamers can petition the ATP or WTA (the governing our bodies for males’s and girls’s tennis respectively) for a protected rating once they have been absent from any tennis occasions for no less than six months due to a bodily damage.
Girls who’re making a comeback to tennis after maternity go away are additionally eligible.
On the lads’s facet, a protected rating is calculated utilizing the participant’s common rating over three months following their damage. They’ll use this rating for the primary 9 tournaments or months following their comeback – whichever comes first. But when the participant is out for greater than a yr, that is prolonged to 12 tournaments/months.
On the ladies’s facet, their rating stays the identical because it was on the time of damage. They’ll use this rating for eight tournaments in a single season, or 12 tournaments in the event that they miss a couple of yr.
This text is the newest from BBC Sport’s Ask Me Something crew.
