WTA Announces Revised and Extended Schedule After Wimbledon Championships 2021

The WTA on Saturday announced a new set of tournaments on the women’s Tour this year. The events in a revised, extended women’s calendar will be hosted after Wimbledon and will continue right up till the US Open.

Earlier, the WTA had announced the schedule for the first 27 weeks of the 2021 season. The fresh lot of tournaments will fill up the remaining nine weeks between the Wimbledon and the US Open.

The new WTA events will play between the end of Wimbledon and the beginning of the US Open

The extended schedule includes two WTA 1000, one WTA 500, and six WTA 250 events, as well as a raft of WTA 125 tournaments.

The revised women’s schedule was also necessitated, in part, by the postponement of this year’s French Open by a week owing to concerns around the prevailing Covid situation in host city Paris.

Tournament organizers, the French Tennis Federation, also said that the week-long would also enable them to allow bigger crowds for matches.

However, as is now the case, the rescheduling of the French Open has resulted in slight adjustments to the WTA schedule.

As part of the revised schedule, the WTA event at Anning has moved to Belgrade

As part of the revised plan, the WTA claycourt event at Anning, China has now been shifted to the Serbian capital Belgrade, for this year only. Also, the WTA 250 event in Strasbourg has been brought forward to week 21 to enable Roland-Garros to go on unhindered between weeks 22 and 23.

In further changes, the WTA 250 tournament in the Romanian capital Bucharest has now moved to Budapest, Hungary.

An update is also awaited on the Nottingham event, which is scheduled to be hosted in week 23.

It’s also now confirmed that the WTA 250 event in Prague has been shifted from May to further back in the European summer and will be played on hardcourt and not clay as was previously planned.

Again, the event at Washington DC, which is scheduled in week 29, has moved to Gdynia, Poland and has also switched from hardcourt to red clay.

Lastly, a new WTA 250 event has been scheduled at Cleveland, Ohio in week 34.

It is understood that the new tournaments are an opportunity for players, who lie significantly back in the rankings, to move up.

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However, it’s early to speculate if the likes of current No.1 Ashleigh Barty, Naomi Osaka, Simona Halep and Serena Williams will make themselves available for these events.