Advantage All: 20-strong all-women’s officiating team set for W40 Pune
An all-female officiating team will work at an ITF World Tennis Tour event in Pune, India on 23-29 January in a first-of-its-kind initiative for Indian tennis.
Led by Asia’s Gold Badge Referee Sheetal Iyer, the W40 Pune event will see female staff throughout – including the chair umpires, chief of officials, line judges, staff at the player desk and physios.
Inspired by the ITF’s ‘Advantage All’ Initiative – which encourages commitment to gender equality and strives to develop and maintain tennis as an equal advantage sport for all – the move comes at one of the first ITF W40 events to be held in India.
W40 tournaments, launched by the ITF for the 2023 season, are itself part of the ITF’s Advantage All strategy, providing an additional tournament tier on the ITF World Tennis Tour to increase playing and earning opportunities for female players, and help ease their transition to higher-level tournaments.
It is perhaps fitting that the W40 event will be headlined by top seed and world No. 71 Tatjana Maria, who returned to tennis four months after giving birth to her second child in April 2021. She has since won two titles, and reached the Wimbledon semi-finals while travelling the tour with her family in tow.
Organisers in Pune hope the initiative will help to generate equal opportunities, act as a platform to highlight the challenges faced by women in sport, and foster a culture to embrace more women in officiating.
“We are thrilled to support this novel initiative – this has been in our minds for a long time but we are happy that we will be able to initiate this to coincide with India's 75th year of Independence celebrations and our Republic Day celebrations,” said Sunder Iyer, Honorary Secretary of the MSLTA and Junior Tennis Secretary of the All India Tennis Association. Iyer is the driving force behind the programme alongside Nitin Kannamwar, ITF Regional Officiating Officer for Asia.
“I would like to thank the ITF, AITA , MSLTA and [tournament venue] Deccan Gymkhana for agreeing with the proposal and initiating this programme jointly.”
“We are happy to be a part of this historic moment,” said tournament director Ashwin Girme, adding that it was a 'proud moment' for the club.
The all-female officiating crew includes:
ITF Supervisor: Sheetal Iyer; Chief of Officials: Leena Nageshkar; Chair Umpires: Antonia Drazic, Avanee Gosavi, Riya Chapekar, Lavleen Raizada, Dakshata Patel, Shraddha Dali; Line Umpires: Anwesha Chandra, Supriya Mallaya, Geetika Paul, Niharika Gore, Neha Uikey, Chhaya Verti, Sakshi Chug, Isha Chopra, Apurva Rokade, Kulsoom Khan, Reshma Ganapate and Anuja Maheswari.
Discover more about the ITF’s Advantage All programme
Follow all the latest from W40 Pune, taking place on 23-29 January, here