The WTA Tour is hoping to shorten its season, reduce the number of tournaments that players must play and give the top women more of a break after Grand Slam events.
The tour is hoping to implement the changes for the 2009 season, the WTA said Tuesday.
The changes, which the WTA board is expected to approve in March, would also include trying to get top players to face each other more often, create four events that coincide with ATP tournaments and simplify the ranking system.
``The Roadmap ... will deliver to fans the stars and rivalries they want to see, and that addresses the issue of player withdrawals caused by a season that is simply too long and gruelling,'' WTA Tour CEO Larry Scott said in a statement.
Under the new system, the season would end in October. The 2006 season ended on Nov. 13 at the WTA Championships in Madrid, Spain.
The WTA said the changes are ``designed to create a more understandable calendar structure for fans, and one that builds stars and rivalries by ensuring that top players remain healthy and are consistently playing against one another on the Tour's biggest stages.''
WTA Tour board member and Tournament Council chairman Steve Simon said the changes were developed with input from tournaments, players, commercial partners and media.
``The Tour's Roadmap ... has been designed to deliver a clearly defined premium product for fans with improved systems to insure the delivery of the star players,'' Simon said.
Last week, the WTA board passed a series of interim rule changes for 2007, including reducing the number of tournaments top players must participate in from 13 to 12 and doubling the fines for a player's late withdrawal up to a maximum of US$40,000 for third and subsequent late withdrawal offences.
The plan will further reduce the mandatory number of tournaments that players must play to 11.
The rise in withdrawal fines came in response to a rash of players pulling out of tournaments this season.
According to the tour, withdrawals from Tier I events _ the 10 most important WTA tournaments _ by players ranked in the top 10 more than doubled from 13 in 2005 to a record 31 in 2006.
Withdrawals at Tier I tournaments by top-10 players have increased 72 per cent over the past five seasons, the tour said, and for the first time, none of the 10 Tier I events featured more than five women ranked in the top 10.
© The Canadian Press, 2007
