BWF Memorandum.
Dear Members and Continental Confederations,
More cancellations of international tournaments have recently been announced due to the COVID-19 situation. BWF is in close contact with the remaining 2020 tournament hosts to assess the feasibility of international tournaments going ahead or whether more tournaments will have to be cancelled. BWF will make ongoing announcements as the situation evolves.
In this connection, BWF is continually reviewing the best way to unfreeze the World Rankings, taking into account the impact of how points count towards world rankings for tournaments taking place in the new few months.
Tournaments Restarting 2020
BWF is trying to create a detailed overview of the tournament situation for the rest of the year, and the exact way to unfreeze the ranking will to a large extent, be dependent on how many international tournaments will actually be able to take place.
Although tournaments may take place in the coming weeks and months with the first tournament presently being Yonex Latvia International (28-30 August 2020), it has not been decided to unfreeze the World Rankings immediately after the completion of this first tournament. Exactly how points from such completed tournaments will be counted towards future rankings has yet to be finalized.
BWF believes that it is important that World Ranking points be awarded to international tournaments as this is an important factor and incentive for such tournaments (and players) to actually take place and be completed in a viable way.
It is however clear that the COVID-19 situation is creating challenges for a fully equitable way for all players around the world to participate. Therefore BWF is seeking to take into account the very special circumstances of the world situation we are presently facing and to ensure that awarding points will not disproportionately create unreasonable impacts on the overall World Ranking structure.
BWF will make further announcements around the situation as soon as possible, but due to the uncertainty around the COVID-19 situation and its development in the next months, it is not possible to provide an exact timing of this time.
BWF will keep you updated on an ongoing basis as decisions are made.
