Jürgen Vollstaedt DTB-Seniorenreferent Klaus Willert Seniors ...

Jürgen Vollstaedt
DTB‐Seniorenreferent
Klaus Willert
Seniors Department
Deutscher Tennis Bund
2013 ITF Seniors Circuit – ITF Seniors Regulations
Dear Juergen, dear Klaus,
Davis Cup Fed Cup Olympic Tennis Event Pro Circuits Officiating Rules
Development Juniors Wheelchair Tennis Seniors Technical Coaching Anti-Doping
ITF Ltd Registered Office: PO Box N-272 Nassau Bahamas
International Tennis Federation
Bank Lane Roehampton
London SW15 5XZ
Telephone: +44 (0)20 8878 6464
Facsimile: +44 (0)20 8392 4742
Email: info@itftennis.com
Web: www.itftennis.com
22 November 2012
Thank you for your letter dated 1 November 2012 regarding proposals for improvements on the
ITF Seniors Circuit.
Due consideration was given to the topics raised in your letter at the recent ITF seniors
Committee Meeting in London. Please find the answers to your points below:
The IPIN system, introduced back in 2004, is currently designed to support the three official
languages of the ITF, English, Spanish and French. As per your suggestion the ITF is looking into the
possibility of expanding the number of languages further and we confirm that the first language to
be incorporated would be German. The current system does not have the flexibility of adding new
languages, but the ITF main database is currently being replaced with a more modern one and a
CRM system which will come into use in the middle of 2013. This will then also allow a redesign of
the IPIN system and it will be possible to know the timeframe of this project within the first couple
of months in 2013.
In the meantime, we are going to provide you with German translations of the three most
technical document part of the IPIN sign‐up and renewal process that are the “player welfare
statement”, the “terms and conditions” as well as the “privacy policy”.
We are also continuously working on improving the IPIN registration and renewal, as well as entry
and withdrawal process and to simplify the use of IPIN for players within the current technical
framework.
The ITF is currently looking into expanding the options of online payment for IPIN with the
intention to introduce Paypal, Giropay, ELV, and Commerzbank Online

Bank Transfer as new payment options during the first few months in 2013. Further to the online
payment, there is always the possibility for players to pay in cash on site at the first tournament a
player is playing in a given year, should they not be able or willing to make the payment online.
With regard to the tournament entry deadlines on the ITF Seniors Circuit, there are various
procedures taking place after the entry deadline which make it impossible to make the 19‐day
deadline any shorter than just a couple of days later than it currently is. These procedures include
the organiser window of 3 days, the publishing of acceptance list, the withdrawal deadline, the
running of the seed ranking and finally the freeze deadline, when the tournament data is handed
over to the Referee through the tournament management software.
The ITF believes that now that players have got used to the existing entry deadlines it would be
counter‐productive to change them already for 2013. For this reason, the ITF is making provision
for a much higher number of wild cards on the Seniors Circuit than on any other of the other
Circuits. These can be given to those players who miss the entry deadline, giving tournaments a
second deadline to accept these wild card players until the draw is made, between 5 days and 1
day before the start of the event. Please be also informed that the 33‐day entry deadline has not
been used much in 2013 and will be phased out during 2013.
You are requesting that draws and order of play for tournaments should be available on the ITF
website much sooner. In the scenario of the 19 days entry deadline, the rules currently allow
tournaments a window of 5 days to the tournament referee to prepare the draws and then publish
them to the website. The ITF encourages tournaments to publish the draw and the order of play as
soon as it is made on the ITF website. There are a number of reasons, why a tournament might not
be able or willing to publish the draw on the day of the freeze deadline 5 days before the start of
the event, for example: the time it takes to input all wild cards into the draw, the general time
constraints of the tournament director and tournament referee, the need to coordinate the
schedule between the referee and the tournament director. Therefore the ITF believes that there
is need to give tournaments a certain degree of flexibility regarding the time during which the
draws and order of play are to be published.
With regard to the tournament principles on the ITF Seniors Calendar the ITF Seniors Committee
has confirmed the current principles again for 2013 and therefore, it is not possible to allow date
flexibility for grade 3‐5 tournaments on the Seniors Circuit as per your suggestion.
The regulation regarding the medical requirements on site at ITF Seniors Circuit events have been
comprehensively reviewed by the Committee recently and are staying as they were in the 2012
Seniors Regulations. The same applies to the Officiating requirements on the Seniors Circuit and
the number of tournaments that are taken into account to determine the Seniors World Individual
Ranking.
For 2013, the number of seeded players will be increasing for smaller draws: there will be 4 seeds
in draws with 8 – 16 players and 8 seeds for draws with 17‐47 players. The ITF firmly opposes the
idea of any concealed seeding.
There will also be slightly more flexibility for tournaments with few entered players to receive
additional wild cards.
With regard to the data exchange between the DTB and the ITF, our ICT department is currently
Davis Cup Fed Cup Olympic Tennis Event Pro Circuits Officiating Rules
Development Juniors Wheelchair Tennis Seniors Technical Coaching Anti-Doping
ITF Ltd Registered Office: PO Box N-272 Nassau Bahamas

making plans to provide an automated web service that will allow any National Association to
receive player, ranking, and results data directly from our central database in XML format. This
new service will be developed with the goal of making this information available to all National
Associations who wish to use it. Thus it needs to be developed with flexibility to cater for as wide a
range of differing needs as possible. You should be contacted directly with further details of this
new initiative during the next 2‐3 months.
Finally, each national association govern the rules and procedure related to the acceptance criteria
at their closed national championships. Therefore it is a decision of the USTA whether or not
foreign players are accepted at their Closed National tournament. Any person interested in
participating should contact the entry authority as itemised on the official fact sheet on the ITF
website.
We hope that these answers have fully or partly clarified the matters that you have raised in your
letter and remain at your disposal should you have any further queries.
Kind regards,
Luca Santilli
Head, Juniors & Seniors Tennis
Davis Cup Fed Cup Olympic Tennis Event Pro Circuits Officiating Rules
Development Juniors Wheelchair Tennis Seniors Technical Coaching Anti-Doping
ITF Ltd Registered Office: PO Box N-272 Nassau Bahamas