Elena Rybakina withdrew from the Japan Open in Tokyo after calling out the WTA, and her coach Stefano Vukov came to her defence.
Vukov is an interesting figure in tennis as the coach was in hot waters earlier this year after being called out by several people for his 'way of coaching.' Rybakina stood by him that time, lashing out against people who were 'making things up,' and it was just one of her outbursts this year.
The Kazakstani player started to speak up more recently, something her fans welcomed, though some were caught off guard because she never seemed that outspoken. Her most recent complaint came a few days ago when she blasted the WTA for changing rules days before an event.
The rule in question was her being stripped of her bye in favour of performance byes for some other players. She wasn't happy with it and spoke her mind but also withdrew from the event after that, creating even more confusion.
Her coach has now spoken out on the whole fiasco on Instagram and slammed the WTA for the entire performance bye thing.
Just to make things clear, there is no explanation of what a performance bye is. What does this mean? Do we add byes to help performing players? Or do we take away ranking earned byes? And isn't ranking itself a sign of performance?
Last year we came from a final in Europe and played in Japan 2 days later and performance byes no where to be found. The issue is always the same lack of communication. This will also apply from Tokyo 500 to Beijing 1000 next week. 4 performance byes will be awarded.
Vukov continued calling out the WTA, adding that the system simply doesn't work. He called on the organisation for more transparency.
Most players have already qualified for the final 8, so for what reason should they even compete before Cancun. The reason is that most tournaments are mandatory, and fines are given out to players if you don't compete in them.
Players always pay the consequences. The system doesn't work. The marketing is terrible as you can all see Elena qualified weeks ago, and just yesterday, WTA decided to post something. We need transparency. All players need to understand what is going on. Stop blaming players for mistakes made by the system itself.
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