The men’s and women’s tennis tours have responded to Wimbledon’s ban on Russian and Belarusian players by stripping the event of ranking points this year, the most significant rebuke to date of efforts by global sports organisations to ostracise individual Russian athletes as punishment for their country’s invasion of Ukraine.

It is a move without precedent in tennis, and without the points, Wimbledon, the oldest of the four Grand Slam tournaments, will technically be an exhibition event, bringing no ranking boost to those who excel on its pristine lawns this year.

Though Wimbledon, for now, is the only one of the four major tournaments to ban Russians and Belarusians, the power play by the tours could lead to countermeasures, including the possibility of Grand Slam events considering an alternative ranking system or aligning to make more decisions independently of the tours.

The International Tennis Federation, which operates separately from the tours, also announced that it was removing ranking points from the junior and wheelchair events at Wimbledon this year.

Organisers of Wimbledon, a grass court tournament and British cultural institution that begins on June 27, announced the ban on Russian and Belarusian players last month in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was undertaken with the support of Belarus.

Russia has already been stripped of the hosting rights to events and has seen its teams ejected from major competitions like soccer’s World Cup. But only a few sports, notably figure skating and track and field, have barred individual athletes from Russia and Belarus from competing.

“The ability for players of any nationality to enter tournaments based on merit, and without discrimination, is fundamental to our Tour,” the ATP said in a statement on Friday. “The decision by Wimbledon to ban Russian and Belarusian players from competing in the U.K. this summer undermines this principle and the integrity of the ATP Ranking system. It is also inconsistent with our Rankings agreement.

Absent a change in circumstances, it is with great regret and reluctance that we see no option but to remove ATP Ranking points from Wimbledon for 2022.”

Both tours condemned the invasion of Ukraine.

But Sergiy Stakohvsky, a recently retired Ukrainian men’s player now in the Ukrainian military, expressed bitterness at the ATP decision in a post on Twitter, calling it a “shameful day in tennis.”

The ATP’s and WTA’s move, made after extensive internal debate and despite pushback from players and pleas from Wimbledon officials, is expected to have little effect on the tournament’s bottom line. The world’s top men’s players who are not from Russia and Belarus are still expected to participate. Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1 men’s player from Serbia and a six-time Wimbledon champion, has said he would not support “a boycott” even if he remained against the decision to bar the Russian and Belarusian players.

This year’s Wimbledon champions will still lift the same trophies hoisted by their predecessors and have their names inscribed on the honour roll posted inside the

clubhouse of the All England Club. And neither attendance nor news media coverage of Wimbledon is expected to dip. The winners will be considered legitimate Grand Slam champions.

But the leadership of the ATP, including its player council, which includes stars like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, ultimately decided that it was important to take a strong stand against the ban on individual players in order to dissuade tournaments

from barring players — now or in the future — based on political concerns.

“How do you draw the line of when you ban players and when you don’t?” Yevgeny Kafelnikov, a Russian and a former No. 1 singles player, said in a telephone interview from Moscow.

In announcing bans on individual athletes, Wimbledon and the British grass-court events remain outliers. No other tour event has followed their lead. Russian and Belarusian players, including the men’s No. 2, Daniil Medvedev of Russia, and the women’s No. 7, Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, are set to take part in the French Open when it starts on Sunday.

New York Times News Service