Women's Tennis Association

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Women's Tennis Association
(WTA)
WTA logo
founding June 1973 in London
founder Billie Jean King
Seat Saint Petersburg
Chair Mickey Lawler ,
President
Website www.wtatennis.com

The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) is the association of professional tennis players . It is therefore the counterpart to the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for men. The International Tennis Federation (ITF), which lays down the rules of the game, stands above WTA and ATP .

history

The WTA was founded as the Virginia Slim Series in 1970 because of the significant differences in prize money between men and women in tennis. In September 1970, nine players, the so-called Original 9 , signed a one-dollar contract with Gladys Heldman , the editor of World Tennis Magazine . The players were Billie Jean King , Rosie Casals , Nancy Richey , Kerry Melville , Peaches Bartkowicz , Kristy Pigeon , Judy Tegart , Valerie Ziegenfuss and Julie Heldman . The contract authorized the players to compete in the Virginia Slims Series. 1971 was the first official season of the tour, in which 19 tournaments were played. That year, Billie Jean King became the first professional player to win more than $ 100,000 in one season. It was also King who founded today's WTA in London in 1973 . In the same year, the tournament management of the US Open paid the players the same amount of prize money as the men for the first time. In 1974, the WTA signed a television broadcast rights agreement with CBS for the first time . In 1975 a women's world ranking was introduced - with Chris Evert in first place. The placement of the players was from now on a criterion for admission to tournaments. In 1980 more than 250 women played the tournament series, which included 47 tournaments worldwide. In 1982 Martina Navrátilová became the first player to win over $ 1 million in prize money in one season.

organization

The WTA now has two more so-called headquarters in addition to the corporate headquarters in St. Petersburg, these are the European headquarters in London and the Asia-Pacific headquarters in Beijing . The chairman and managing director is Stacey Allaster . She was the WTA Tour President since 2006 and was promoted to Managing Director in 2009. She announced her resignation in September 2015. Vice-president is Laurence Applebaum . Steve Simon has been the new President since October 5, 2015.

WTA tour

The women's tennis series organized by the WTA is called the WTA Tour , to which most professional tournaments belong. The most important tournament is the WTA Tour Championships . The "normal" tournaments of the WTA Tour are divided into different classes (English "Tiers"); up to 2008 these were, from bottom to top, Tier I to Tier V. Since the reform that took effect in 2009, the five tier classes have been replaced by the four “categories” International , Premier , Premier 5 and Premier Mandatory .

The Grand Slam tournaments and the Fed Cup are not part of the WTA Tour as they are hosted by the ITF.

World ranking

The WTA maintains the point rankings for the women's tennis world rankings . To be there, a player must be 14 years of age and have collected points in at least three tournaments. The world rankings are updated every Monday (except during the two-week Grand Slam tournaments). The points scored in a tournament depend on which round a player has reached.

The first world number one was on November 3, 1975 Chris Evert . At 377 weeks, Steffi Graf is the player who has topped the tennis world rankings for the longest time. The youngest world number one to date was Martina Hingis . A total of 26 different players have been at the top of the ranking so far, the last newcomer to this group in January 2019 after her second Grand Slam in Australia was the Japanese Naomi Osaka .

Awards

The association will award the WTA Awards various awards for special achievements during the season, including for the "Player of the Year" , the "double-team of the year" , the "climber of the year" , the "Rookie of the Year" , the "Returning Woman of the Year" and the "Best Tournament of the Year" , as well as several audience prizes that are determined by fan votes, such as B. "Beat of the Year" or "Game of the Year" .

Records

Active players are shown in bold .

Most single titles

As of July 13, 2017
No. Player Number of single titles
1. United StatesUnited States Martina Navrátilová 167
2. United StatesUnited States Chris Evert 154
3. GermanyGermany Steffi Graf 107
4th AustraliaAustralia Margaret Smith Court 92
5. United StatesUnited States Serena Williams 72
6th AustraliaAustralia Evonne Goolagong 68
7th United StatesUnited States Billie Jean King 67
8th. United KingdomUnited Kingdom Virginia Wade 55
8th. United StatesUnited States Lindsay Davenport 55
10. United StatesUnited States Monica Seles 53

Most double titles

As of July 13, 2017
No. Player Number of double titles
1. United StatesUnited States Martina Navrátilová 174
2. United StatesUnited States Rosie Casals 112
3. United StatesUnited States Pam Shriver 106
4th United StatesUnited States Billie Jean King 101
5. BelarusBelarus Natallja Sverava 80
6th United StatesUnited States Lisa Raymond 79
7th Czech RepublicCzech Republic Jana Novotná 76
8th. United StatesUnited States Gigi Fernández 69
SpainSpain Arantxa Sánchez Vicario 69
Czech RepublicCzech Republic Helena Suková 69
10. LatviaLatvia Larisa Neiland 65

Oldest single title winner

  1. Billie Jean King : 39 years, 7 months, 23 days (1983 Birmingham)
  2. Kimiko Date Krumm : 38 years, 11 months, 29 days (2009 Seoul)
  3. Martina Navrátilová : 37 years, 4 months, 2 days (1994 Paris Indoors)
  4. Margaret Smith Court : 34 years, 4 months, 26 days (1976 Melbourne)

Youngest female title winner

  1. Tracy Austin : 14 Years 28 Days (1977 Portland)
  2. Kathy Rinaldi : 14 years, 6 months, 24 days (1981 Kyoto)
  3. Andrea Jaeger : 14 years, 7 months, 14 days (1980 Las Vegas)

Prize money

In 2013 (as of October 28, 2013), a total of 22 female players earned more than 1,000,000 US dollars, more than in any previous season. The American Serena Williams set a new earnings record for tournament prize money in women's tennis in her outstanding 2013 season with total prize money of 12,385,572 US dollars.

At the end of 2017, there were a total of 16 players who had earned more than $ 20 million in tournament prize money in their careers.

As of December 31, 2017
No. Player Total prize money
1 United StatesUnited States Serena Williams 84.463.131
2 United StatesUnited States Venus Williams 39,900,489
3 RussiaRussia Maria Sharapova 37,029,476
4th BelarusBelarus Viktoriya Azaranka 28,431,189
5 PolandPoland Agnieszka Radwańska 27.199.285
6th DenmarkDenmark Caroline Wozniacki 26,834,694
7th SwitzerlandSwitzerland Martina Hingis 24,749,074
8th BelgiumBelgium Kim Clijsters 24,442,340
9 RussiaRussia Svetlana Kuznetsova 24,200,700
10 Czech RepublicCzech Republic Petra Kvitová 24,040,818
11 United StatesUnited States Lindsay Davenport 22,166,338
12 GermanyGermany Steffi Graf 21,895,277
13 United StatesUnited States Martina Navrátilová 21,626,089
14th GermanyGermany Angelique Kerber 21,470,479
15th BelgiumBelgium Justine Henin 20,863,335
16 RomaniaRomania Simona Halep 20,736,015

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The history of the WTA. Archived from the original on September 20, 2012 ; accessed on September 20, 2012 (English).
  2. ↑ Original 9 Reunion: It's A Wrap! wtatennis.com
  3. ^ Biography of Billie Jean King. fembio.org, accessed September 20, 2012 .
  4. ↑ Media guide of the WTA 2011 (page 6). Archived from the original on September 5, 2012 ; accessed on September 20, 2012 (English).
  5. ↑ STACEY ALLASTER LEAVING AS WTA'S CHIEF EXECUTIVE. In: tennis.com. September 22, 2015, accessed September 12, 2016 .
  6. ^ Indian Wells executive Steve Simon to take over as WTA CEO. In: ESPN . October 5, 2015, accessed September 12, 2016 .