Andy Roddick believes Dubai tournament director Salah Tahlak's ranking-points deduction proposal is pure nonsense.
In case you missed it, Tahlak was left furious after Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek withdrew from the WTA 1000 event in Dubai just one day before the tournament's draw. And the Dubai boss didn't hide his frustration a bit, calling on the WTA to sanction players by reducing their ranking points after they pull out of a mandatory tournament.
In his message, Tahlak also suggested that just financially penalizing players wasn't cutting it.
On his Served podcast, Roddick started by explaining that February was "a terrible slot" for WTA 1000 tournaments and that top players withdrawing would always happen. Also, the 2003 US Open champion called out Tahlak by stating that "you are the one who pushes for the designation of a 1000 in that region in February."
Then, Roddick turned to specifically addressing Tahlak's claim that players should be "docked points" for skipping a tournament.
Roddick: He's going to dock points from six months ago? How does that work? It doesn't make any sense
“So he wants to dock points that they have already won somewhere else? They have earned those points. Can you imagine someone winning a playoff game and then someone taking it away somehow? He’s going to dock points from six months ago? How does that even work?" Roddick questioned on his podcast.
“Every point they have on their point total right now is earned because they have won matches and now we are going to dock points? I don’t think that is very well thought out. That does not make sense to me.
“You’re going to dock them money, so you are going to take that because they can’t play your tournament for one reason or another, that’s already weird and then you are going to take points away. That does not make any sense.”
When calling out the calendar and schedule in one of her interviews from last year, Swiatek indicated that she would be willing to "break rules" and miss certain mandatory tournaments if she believed that could help her in the long run. That may have been the case in Dubai, where the six-time Grand Slam champion cited "a change of schedule" for her decision.
Meanwhile, Sabalenka skipped both Doha and Dubai, and will only play her first WTA 1000 tournament of the year in Indian Wells.
