The WTA have fined Wimbledon £207,000 and the LTA £620,000 for banning Russian and Belorussian players from this years grass court tournaments.
Apparently the fines have to be paid before a hearing to the appeal (which has been lodged) can be heard - which is an interesting way of doing things and one way of bolstering the coffers!

I suspect that there is a degree of annoyance within the WTA leadership that most of the top players did still turn up even though there arent many of them left at the back end of the tournament.

Guessing the ATP will follow suit in due course.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/62040296

-- Edited by brittak on Monday 4th of July 2022 03:18:25 PM

Not sure how annoyed the WTA will really be. The main thing for them I maintain was to level the ranking points playing field for this year that Wimbledon had unilaterally upset. That was done.

Bit surprised about the fining though bit I guess it is down to contracts agreed. I would have thought those would be more between the Slams and the ITF.

I love how there is an appeals process: you appeal to the person that set the fine, after you have paid it. I have to say that I hope that Wimbledon just declines to pay.

Whatever the morality of the ban (which I happen to agree with), I think that the WTA (and the ATP) are just shambolic: they punish all of their eligible players by removing points from them, and then fine Wimbledon & the LTA a trifling amount to prove what, precisely?

Wimbledon has demonstrated that it is just fine without points, WTA (/ ATP) are in a bit of bother without Wimbledon.

foobarbaz wrote:

---

I'm way late to this discussion, but I just read about the fines levied by the ATP/WTA. Really this is pocket money for Wimbledon, and I could imagine it being a mechanism used simply to allow reversing of the decision to not award ranking points, at the appeal hearing.

---

 I don't see it as an either/ or. The non awarding of ranking points was to my mind mainly about levelling the playing field this year for ATP / WTA members The fine is purely about punishment for Wimbledon's banning actions which I assume the ATP / WTA believe breaks some sort of contract.

I very much doubt there will ever be Wimbledon 2022 points awarded. But hey time will tell. 

Does anyone know, are they providing ranking points for the wheelchair . I know in principle they may not but not a single Russian plays on the wheelchair tour at all and so all not giving ranking points would do is harm the players who would have been making up the field regardless. If the ITF have sense they would have left this one alone - hopefully they did do?

Stircrazy wrote:

---

Elena Rybakina:  a Russian champion by the back door!    Born in Moscow, resident in Moscow, Kazakh (for financial reasons) since 2018.  Am so disappointed for Ons.

---

 Ha  yes I see that her residence is given as Moscow. Of course she had to play but it does raise further questions regarding how meaningful were the bans on these representing Russia & Belarus, some of whom are resident far away from there. I would never have been banning anybody unless to some even small effect.

And ultimately I still maintain that ( particularly unilateral ) bans were pretty much a waste of time with regard to effecting the big picture ( though I respect these Ukrainians who have said how appreciative they were ).

And they just left the very much smaller picture of tennis a bit messed up re its rankings due to an ATP / WTA reaction that could have been well foreseen.

Though ranking points are not the be all and end all. In particular Slams matter so much just in themselves and it's proved a very watchable Wimbledon, which I have got into more than most years. But then to my mind, while maybe effecting a few non grass court players at the margins, especially as the tournament progressed it was never going to be some sort of 'exhibition' / 'asterisk' tournament. Tell that to say Jabeur and Nadal and look at many of the matches and reactions. Thank you, players.

-- Edited by indiana on Saturday 9th of July 2022 07:00:46 PM