Even though it admits that long-term injuries to veteran stars have affected the game, the WTA claims success in the release of its quarterly "Roadmap Report," which compares player participation and withdrawal rates from January–October 2008 with January–October 2011.
The WTA's analysis shows that top player participation is up 24 percent in the tour’s top nine Premier events and overall withdrawals are down 18 percent, even though Venus Williams, Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters all suffered from long-term injuries this year. The WTA created the Roadmap to shorten the season, provide more breaks for top players and reduce top player tournament commitments, among other things.
However, while the tour cites a decrease in player pullouts, the Montreal Gazette, which has been tracking 2011 numbers weekly, says the WTA has had 164 injuries, retirements or walkovers in singles and doubles, up from 95 in 2010.
The WTA cites only 77 walkovers or retirements in singles in 2011, unchanged from 2008, and cites 290 main-draw withdrawls in 2011, as compared to opposed to 353 in 2008, an 18% improvement. However, the WTA does not track these statistics for doubles.
The Gazette does not track withdrawals prior to the release of the main draws like the WTA does, as the information is sometimes hard to come by and withdrawals can happen well in advance of the release of the main draw, and are often not publicized.
While the top players do not have to commit to as many tournaments as they did in 2008, the WTA was only able to meet 57 percent of its top player commitment to 14 major events, a 13 percent decline from 2009.
The Roadmap also says that medical timeouts have decreased.
In other news, the WTA said over the past 18 months it has secured $80 million in revenues and says attendance in 2011 at Premier events is up by 12 percent from 2010.