ITF Acceptance Lists and WTN
On the 26th April 2022, the ITF introduced the WTN (World Tennis Number) as the secondary criteria to produce their acceptance list into ITF Junior Tournaments.
The summary as how the WTN will be used is as follows:
- Singles acceptance will continue to prioritise those players with a combined ITF Junior ranking.
- Priority acceptance will remain for players who have achieved an ATP or WTA professional ranking.
- Following the above, unranked players with a verified singles WTN will as of the Monday before the entry deadline will next be ordered in the acceptance list.
- The WTN is updated weekly, on Wednesday.
- Where players have no ranking, and do not have a verified singles WTN, acceptances will be ordered by the existing criteria of nation, region and zone which will remain unchanged.
Verified or unverified?
The WTN algorithm applies a confidence level to the rating of each player. This is calculated based on frequency of play as well as when the matches have been played. I.e., The more recent the match(es) and the more matches you play will help improve the confidence level of your WTN. A player’s confidence level can increase over a short period of time.
The confidence level is denoted by the blue or grey tick in a player’s profile at itftennis.com
- Blue tick – The algorithm has a high degree of confidence that the number is accurate and the WTN is therefore verified. The singles WTN will be applied to WTT Juniors acceptance lists.
- Grey tick – The algorithm has a lower degree of confidence, and a more up to date results history is required. The WTN will not be used for WTT Juniors acceptance lists.
Irish players WTN
All player’s results from open tournaments in Ireland are used to update the WTN. Players that have taken part in a reasonable amount of Irish Open tournaments recently, have a verified WTN.
Your singles and doubles WTN is displayed on your Tennis Ireland profile under your club:
My WTN is not showing in the Acceptance List
Some players have two WTN Tennis IDs: One under their ITF account, with few results associated, and one related to Tennis Ireland database, with many results associated. In this case, the ITF uses the ITF account ID to create the Acceptance List and as the number of results is small, it is not verified and not considered in the selection process. Merging all results into one ID could well change the merged WTN value to verified and increase any chances to get accepted into ITF-18 tournaments.
Checking for duplicates:
A player WTN in Tennis Ireland profile should be a perfect match with the WTN in the ITF profile. If this is not the case, there is a duplicate issue. Contact ITF World Tennis Number Support on support@wtn.zendesk.com with details of both numbers to request a merge of the two accounts. Merge requests must be received by the WTN department no later than 10 working days prior to the entry deadline, to allow time for the change to be processed. No changes will be made to the WTN of a player after the respective entry deadline.
Note: We have checked ITF-18 Belfast and notified the WTN support team about players with duplicated IDs in it. Their WTN after merge will be published Wednesday 15 June 2022.