Andy Murray Will be Benefitted by Protected Ranking to Play in Australian Open

The Tennis star, Andy Murray finally returned to the sport through the Australian Open in the First month of 2019 as he just started in June, 2018 after healing up from an injury but soon ended his season in September by playing at just six events which resulted to be an injury season for him. But good news for his fans is that after training for a good period of time span in Philladelphia with restoring specialist Bill Knowles, he has been finally collecting up for his comeback in the New Year, thus he is all set to make his comeback at the Brisbane International.

In just some weeks later, Andy Murray will be joining back the world’s biggest stars in tennis at Melbourne, Australia for the very first Grand Slam tournament of the year after making use of his protected ranking. Protective ranking can be explained as that a player may make a petition to the Executive Chairman & President for the purpose of Entry Protection every time when a player is physically injured and is out from the game and doesn’t compete for the period of six months. There is six months’ time since the last tournament is played for the filing of petition. The Entry Protection is basically a position in the ATP Rankings, as determined by the player’s average ATP Rankings in that position during the first three months after the day of his injury. There is also a condition that the Entry Protection is a system which shall be for special exempt consideration, qualifying competition or for the main tournament. The Entry Protection shall be void if used for just seeding purposes, for entry into the Nitto ATP Finals or in the Lucky Loser consideration. Therefore the protected ranking can render the players an opportunity to enter tournaments with the ‘average rankings position’ of their first three months of injury. However, In Murray’s case, he was placed at  world No. 1 when he competed at Wimbledon in July 2017, by thereafter his ranking got down to No. 3 by the end of October so his average ranking came to be at No. 2. The important thing is that the ATP rankings are just for a year, therefore a player can seriously tumble down the leaderboard as a result of away from the game due to some injury.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/46451905