Elena Rybakina ripped the WTA over their trialing of performance byes which left the Kazakh without a top-4 seeding in Tokyo and a bye first-round. Rybakina, ranked at No 5 in the world, was projected to be the third-seeded player in Tokyo, behind Iga Swiatek and Jessica Pegula. But in Tokyo, the WTA is trialing a new rule that rewards players who made the final stages in the previous week with a bye first-round. Due to that, Maria Sakkari and Caroline Garcia – who made the Guadalajara semifinal this past week – were named as the third and fourth seeds, respectively. Instead of having a first-round bye in Tokyo, Rybakina will have to face Linda Noskova. “Performance bye. Thank you for changing the rules last moment. Great decisions as always @wta,” Rybakina captioned her Instagram Story. Rybakina’s Instagram Story also included clown and circus emojis, which were clearly directed at the WTA.
Rybakina calls out the WTA again
After suffering a loss in the Montreal semifinal against Liudmila Samsonova – in a match that finished at 02:55 local time – Rybakina called out the WTA. “Definitely I feel destroyed just because of the scheduling and the whole situation. I’m not really happy about it, but yeah, it is what it is. Unfortunately, players cannot do much in these situations. The decision is not really ours. Weather was not helpful. So I picked up some injuries I would say, but we tried to manage it and see how we will go from that. It’s the first time when the match went I think that long, and we finished also so late. It’s the first time and hopefully the last time because I think it’s been a little bit unprofessional from the – I cannot say really the tournament because I think that the most important is the WTA here. Leadership a little bit weak for now, but hopefully something is going to change because this year it was many situations which I cannot really understand. We finished at 3, I showered, did some stretching a little bit, went back to the hotel. I think I fell asleep at 5. I woke up at 10, and then it was impossible to sleep. So, yeah, it definitely was not enough time to recover,” Rybakina said in August.