The soap opera is not about to close. Just minutes after the announcement of the banishment of Russian and Belarusian players from Wimbledon, the ATP, which manages the men’s professional tennis circuit, considered this decision “unfair” in a press release. “We believe that today’s unilateral decision by Wimbledon (…) to exclude Russian and Belarusian players from grass-court tournaments this season is unfair and may set a damaging precedent for tennis.”
The press release also specifies that this decision is against the policy of the ATP: “Discrimination based on nationality also constitutes a violation of our agreements with Wimbledon under the terms of which the participation of a player is based only on his ranking. We will now analyze (…) the follow-up to be given to this decision”.
The representatives of the ATP nevertheless specified in the preamble that they “strongly condemned the invasion of Ukraine by Russia” and that they were “in solidarity with the millions of innocent people affected by the war”. For them, the best solution would be to stick to the measures taken so far, i.e. the participation of athletes in ATP events under a neutral flag, “a position that has until now been shared by all of professional tennis”.
The organizers of the British tournament had announced this prohibition measure in the middle of the afternoon. Wimbledon is the first individual tournament to restrict the participation of players from these two countries.