Women
A small tweak to the WTA rules means that women players, after a maternity career break, do not have to rebuild their careers and work their way up through the rankings from scratch. They can return to the professional game with their previous ranking. Perhaps inspired by Serena Williams’ return from childbirth in 2018, Tsvetana Pironkova returned in 2020 after a 3-year maternity career break and did spectacularly well.
She reached the quarter finals to take on Williams, and even managed to get a set off the six-times champion. By getting into the quarter finals, Pironkova earned a massive $425,000, increasing her lifetime prize money by nearly 10%. This shows that it only takes a small change to open opportunities to women returners. Those of us who have had to rebuild our careers after taking time off for our children, know only too well how hard it is to start all over again.
