WTA chief sticks to his guns in Peng Shuai case

LOS ANGELES, Dec 03 (AFP): Steve Simon's standoff with China in the Peng Shuai affair has earned the head of the Women's Tennis Association praise as an innovative leader with the courage of his convictions.

Since taking over as WTA chair and CEO in 2015, Simon had made China the main source of revenue for the women's circuit, signing a lucrative 10-year contract in 2018 to make Shenzhen the host of the traditional end-of-season tournament for the women's game.

Giving that event to a country which already had nine other tournaments for a total of 30 million dollars (26.4 million euros) did not look like a risky strategy at the time.

But three years on the financial interests of the WTA could be considerably weakened by the consequences stemming from Peng, an ex-doubles world number one, who went missing after claiming on social media that a former senior Chinese Communist Party official coerced her into sex.

After threatening to cancel tournaments in China, the WTA on Wednesday announced "the immediate suspension of all WTA tournaments in China, including Hong Kong".