"You're doing great, Jelena. Now on my count, push."
Another interesting result from last week's Pajama Party. The WTA is instituting a cap on the number of medical timeouts a player can use during the year free of charge. After that, players will be required to pay for any additional timeouts they use:
As prizemoney soars to record levels despite the potential bite of the global economic crisis, the financial penalties are unlikely to inflict excessive pain, ranging from $US100 ($A151) per visit at smaller tournaments such as the new Brisbane International in January, to about $500 at the biggest, such as Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid and Beijing.
The four grand slams, which are run by the International Tennis Federation, would be exempt from the cap, expected to be set at six or seven for the year. The ATP has no plans to introduce a similar system, but is likely to monitor its impact.
This is kind of fucked up for the lower ranked players, who generally are not in as good of physical shape as the top players and therefore more likely to get injured. I'm all for reducing the number of useless medical timeouts for massages and spa treatments, but is this really going to do anything other than hurt the lower ranked players? I'm pretty sure the multi-millionaires aren't going to care if they have to shell out $100 for a quick massage. Hell, that's cheaper than at my spa.
Also, I can't help but imagine this topic being brought up at the pajama party and everyone silently staring at JJ and her just shrugging, "What? Why are you looking at me?"
No reason. No reason at all.
