British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

JonathanH wrote:

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As well as Intellectual Disability and Deaf/Hard of Hearing tournaments, the Australian Open will include a Blind/Low Vision tournament as well, with the top 16 players taking part in a team competition between Team Australia and Team World. Team World includes a British player, Naqi Rizvi.

Here is the article if anyone wants to read it:

ausopen.com/articles/news/australian-open-2026-blind-and-low-vision-showdown-make-grand-slam-history

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 Amazing - there seem to be different levels of disability which allow for different rules around bounces etc in the blind/low vision event. there is another British, Ivan Rodriguez- Deb who is also playing. 

JonathanH wrote:

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Australia seems to be way ahead in terms of the other forms of disability tennis and providing inclusive events. The UK and the LTA seem to be close behind though. I guess it may be a matter of funding. The manager of Team World seems to be Sophie Hall, the Disability Competitions Manager at the LTA. The LTA announced a 25% increase in funding for disability tennis at the end of 2025, so hopefully there will be even more opportunities and more players with disabilities getting involved.

In terms of the AO Intellectual Disability and DHOH tournaments, I'm assuming Esah Hyat will be playing in the men's DHOH? And Anna McBride will be defending her title in the ID tournament?

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 Pretty sure that Annas Dad said the AO was a key target for Anna. she was quite poorly and injured back end of last year but getting herself fit for Australia. They may already have made their way down to Australia or will be shortly. 

There are also world games each year, last season was Kazakhstan. Year before in France, I believe? France seem to be the third nation in terms of strength

It looks like it is European and other regional games this coming year, youre right, with World Games in Egypt in late 2027

https://virtus.sport/eventsvs/2027-global-games

Might be a rookie question, but what's UTR and WTN and which is more accurate and reliable?

JonathanH wrote:

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Might be a rookie question, but what's UTR and WTN and which is more accurate and reliable?

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UTR is Universal Tennis Rating and WTN is the ITF's World Tennis Number rating system.

UTR was developed by an American and is based on the French rating system with modifications. UTR is based on the number of games won and the UTR of your opponent over the last 30 matches. It grew when it was adopted by US colleges as part of their measures when assessing players but they've now officially moved to the WTN, although many colleges still use the UTR unofficially. The WTN works in a similar way and is adopted by most national associations.

UTR is the more established and many people regard it as more accurate than the WTN but I don't find much difference in most cases, although by the ITFs own admission the algorithm is still being refined. Both ratings are a better measure than rankings.