10 Burning Questions in 2022: What does a WTA calendar look like without China?

ABOVE: Flashback: Tennis Channel Live interviews WTA CEO Steve Simon on the ongoing Peng Shuai investigation.

BELOW: As we approach the start of the new tennis season, we'll answer 10 thought-provoking questions that may define the game in 2022.

When the WTA Roadmap was unveiled in 2009, it brought about sweeping reforms to the tour’s schedule and structure. In addition to a badly needed revamp of the women’s tennis calendar, it marked the first sign of a major push into the still untapped Chinese market. The Beijing tournament, formerly a second-tier event, was upgraded to a Premier Mandatory, a distinction only shared by three other tournaments.

In the decade that followed, the WTA’s investment into China only grew—hastened in part by a wave of tennis interest sparked when Li Na claimed the first of her two Grand Slam titles. When Li triumphed in 2011, there were only two tournaments in her country, Beijing and Guangzhou. By the time she won her second Slam, four years later, that number had ballooned to five and showed no signs of slowing down.

In 2019 there were a total of nine events held in China, including the WTA’s two signature tournaments: the WTA Elite Trophy, a second-tier year-end championships which made its debut in Zhuhai in 2015; and the season-ending WTA Finals, which moved to Shenzhen with a record-breaking prize purse.

The WTA’s recent announcement that it would suspend all tournaments in China because of concerns about the safety of Peng Shuai, a Grand Slam doubles champion who accused a former Chinese government official of sexual assault, sparked global discussion as more and more organizations question their own relationships with the world’s most populous country.

With as much as a fifth of the tennis calendar now up in the air, where does women’s tennis go from here? What does a WTA calendar look like without China?

For starters, it may look the same as it has the past two years. There have not been any professional tennis tournaments held in China since the start of 2020, as the country suspended all international sporting events that June in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The WTA has been making do in the meantime, moving its year-end championships to Mexico and adding a slate of smaller tournaments across the U.S. and Europe on single-year licenses.

Now, 12 years after the Roadmap was first introduced, we’re once again on the brink of a major shift in women’s tennis—especially as WTA CEO Steve Simon noted in December that the Tour’s boycott of China could extend past 2022.

There are some big opportunities to invest into underserved markets that have a history with the sport. Here are three key regions that could see a boost with the free calendar space.

1. Latin America

As tournaments made the lucrative move to China, WTA sanctions for events in Latin America slowly dwindled. By 2019 there were only three, Acapulco and Monterrey in Mexico; and Bogota in Colombia—the tour’s only stop in South America.

That same year, Roger Federer and Alexander Zverev showed just how much passion the region has for tennis as they filled up soccer-sized stadiums in a five-city exhibition tour of Latin America with scheduled stops in Santiago, Chile; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Bogota; Mexico City and Quito, Ecuador.

The ATP Tour’s clay-court Golden Swing, which stops in Argentina, Chile and Brazil during the first half of the season, can serve as a blueprint for the WTA, who recently enjoyed a successful stint in Guadalajara, Mexico during the tour's Finals.

2. Middle East & North Africa

Women’s tennis has had strong ties in this region for over two decades, with the first women’s tournament in Dubai making its debut in 2001. In fact, the Dubai event implemented equal prize money in 2005, making it the first tour-level stop and only the third professional tennis tournament to do so, following the US Open and the Australian Open.

Dubai is currently joined in the calendar by Doha, Qatar, with the events swapping between WTA 1000 and 500 level each year. Abu Dhabi, UAE, made its debut on the WTA calendar last year as a 500 level event, while Rabat, Morocco, hosts a 250-level tournament that marks the tour’s only stop in Africa. Doha and Istanbul, Turkey, have both hosted the WTA Finals in the past. The rise of Tunisia's Ons Jabeur—the first Arab tennis player to reach the Top 10 on either tour—doesn't hurt matters.

“The WTA went to the Middle East when the Middle East was emerging as an economic power like no other,” WTA President Micky Lawler told She Sports Switzerland in 2019. “And the great thing about that is—while there’s a long way to go—I feel that women’s sports have a lot to do with social advancement as well.”

3. South & Southeast Asia

Scrapping China from the calendar doesn’t mean that the rest of the region is out. Tennis as a whole has a long history in Japan, which has played host to men’s and women’s events since 1979. In 2020 there were three events scheduled in Hiroshima and Tokyo, including the Olympic Games, but all three were cancelled in the outbreak of COVID-19.

When the WTA announced in 2013 that Singapore would be the new WTA Finals host city, it marked the first time that the Asia-Pacific region hosted such a major event since the ATP Tour’s 2005-08 year-end championships in Shanghai. Singapore capped off a late-season swing with stops in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul and Osaka amidst a constellation of Chinese tournaments, while Thailand, Malaysia and Taiwan also featured on the calendar.

Perhaps the most overlooked region of all is India, a country of over 1.3 billion people, which is host to just one professional tennis event: the ATP’s Tata Open Maharashtra in Pune. The last time the country featured on the WTA calendar was in 2008, when Serena Williams lifted the trophy in Bangalore. But financial woes have troubled Indian events in the past—including the ill-fated International Premier Tennis League, which once drew the likes of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Ana Ivanovic and Eugenie Bouchard.