ITF Women's Tournament Cycle

Tour competitions are an intermediate step between junior and amateur tournaments on the one hand and WTA tournaments on the other. ITF , authorizing this and the junior round, has the opportunity to additionally award the best juniors with special invitations to major competitions of this series. ^[one]

Tournaments of the series have a prize pool of $ 15,000 to $ 100,000. For part of the competition, tennis players are additionally paid for accommodation.

Tournaments with a prize pool of less than $ 80,000 are recorded in the WTA ranking with a week delay, with a prize pool of 80,000 or more - simultaneously with the competitions of the WTA tour of that week.

The first ITF competitions to have preparatory status for WTA tournaments were created in 1984. ^[2] The first tournaments were sponsored by USTA , Tennis Europe and Tennis Australia. ^[3] The first season of the tour consisted of 43 tournaments with a total prize pool of $ 340,000.

In 1986, the Federation issued a separate regulation for the tour. The number of competitions exceeded one hundred tournaments, and the total prize pool - $ 1,000,000. A series of competitions in South America was launched, and after a while - a series of tournaments in East Asia.

In 1992, a new peak tournament prize pool was introduced - $ 75,000. A year later, the total prize pool of the tour competitions exceeds $ 2,000,000, and the number of tournaments exceeds two hundred competitions.

By 1997, the total prize pool of the competition increased by 323% compared with the first season of the tour. The Junior Exempt project ^{[1] was created} to accelerate the progress of leading juniors.

In 2000, the Federation introduced into the regulation the possibility of an additional increase in the prize pool for the two senior categories of tournaments (competitions with a prize pool of $ 50 and 75 thousand) by paying accommodation for tennis players.

In 2003, the number of women's tournaments reaches 302, and their total prize pool exceeds $ 6 million. A former Junior Exempt member wins the Grand Slam competition for the first time: Justine Henin becomes the strongest at Roland Garros .

In 2004, the IPIN project was created, according to which each player involved in the professional tour receives his own identification number.

In 2006, a new category of tournaments was created - competitions with a prize pool of $ 100,000.

In 2008, the total prize pool of women's competitions for the first time exceeds $ 10 million.

In 2011, at the ITF competition, the Hawk-eye system was first used (the pioneers were the organizers of the 100-thousandth in Taipei ).

In 2012, an additional category of the smallest competitions was introduced - tournaments with a prize pool of $ 15,000.

• ITF Professional Tour Website
• ITF Competition Rules