Victoria Mboko and Naomi Osaka are unseeded in the Cincinnati Open draw, but they received byes in the opening round due to their final runs at the National Bank Open in Montreal. How is this possible and how does it work specifically?
What is a performance bye?
The WTA Rulebook explains a performance bye as “the type of bye awarded to a player based on her previous week’s performance as determined by the WTA when approving the calendar and draw sizes,” which clearly makes the rules pretty flexible. This caused some controversy two years ago when Elena Rybakina expressed her disapproval of having to play the opening round in Tokyo despite being ranked higher than Maria Sakkari and Caroline Garcia. The WTA awarded performance byes to two Guadalajara semifinalists to help them get to Japan on time. Sakkari and Garcia ended up clashing in the quarterfinals of that tournament.
Elena Rybakina, who didn’t get bye despite being ranked higher than Sakkari and Garcia: https://t.co/bIWrAKQQtN pic.twitter.com/rlqHfVHIUO
— José Morgado (@josemorgado) September 23, 2023
Mboko and Osaka’s case
When the WTA Cincinnati draw was released, Victoria Mboko and Naomi Osaka were yet to make the Montreal final. The way it was handled is that the performance byes would only be used if they won their semifinals; otherwise they have would faced a qualifier or a lucky loser in the opening round. Because both Mboko and Osaka moved into the championship match in Montreal, Cincinnati essentially became a 94-player draw instead of 96.
Receiving a bit of extra rest will be very helpful to the two players, who can now travel to Cincinnati and get some practice time there before hitting the match courts. The controversy of it is that two players couldn’t get into the event and receive a big paycheck with the sheer luck of the draw also compromised–for this to work, Mboko and Osaka had to be placed against a qualifier or a lucky loser in the opening round (with these players, at least on paper, typically being a bit weaker than direct acceptances). That means the Canadian and the Japanese would have benefited even if they lost in Montreal semifinals, coming up against statistically easier opposition in the opening round of Cincinnati.
Giving the two most in-form and very marketable players a better chance in Cincinnati has its merits, but it’s also unfair to those lower down the ranking lists or who didn’t go that deep in Montreal. Rules about performance byes could also be a bit more clear in the WTA Rulebook in the future as presently there’s a ton of ambiguity that makes every case fundamentally different. Whether this kind of help is against the sheer nature of the Open Era is a complex issue that everyone will have their opinion on.
(Editor’s note: After this article was written, both Osaka and Mboko withdrew from Cincinnati, giving their spots up to lucky losers, who both advance straight to Round 2.)
Main Photo Credit: David Kirouac-Imagn Images
