18 January 2021 | Tennis Australia

Following the successful rollout of the UTR Pro Tennis Tour in 2020, current and aspiring professional players will have even more opportunities in 2021 as Tennis Australia and Universal Tennis prepare to deliver up to 45 men’s and women’s events across the country.

The Australian leg of the tour will have close to $1 million AUD in prize money on offer, and as part of a global commitment, Universal Tennis will contribute a minimum of USD $25,000 to each UTR Pro Tennis event.

The format will feature single gender, singles only competitions based on Universal Tennis Ratings (UTR), and feature a player group round robin followed by a World Cup-style playoff format.

The UTR Pro Tennis Tour offers current and aspiring professional players with more opportunities to compete, improve their game and support themselves with prize money. This format guarantees more player competition and results will count for UTR, a global tennis rating system.

During 2020, with the global tennis tour disrupted by the pandemic, the UTR Pro Tennis Tour helped support local players, allowing many of them to continue to compete and earn prize money during a challenging time.

> Read: UTR Pro Tennis Series – Bozovic leads top-performing women in 2020

“The UTR Pro Tennis Tour is a great platform to support our players and give them even more opportunities to play local while building their skills on an international level. We’re excited to continue our partnership with UTR and help our players to develop on a global scale,” Tennis Australia Director of Performance Wally Masur said.

“We are thrilled to build on our strong partnership with Tennis Australia and continue to leverage the UTR tools and technology to bring more opportunities for players to have meaningful, competitive matches while increasing their earning potential. The growth of the 2021 Australian UTR Pro Tennis Tour speaks to our mutual commitment to support the player pathway and growing the great game of tennis,” Universal Tennis Chairman and CEO Mark Leschly said.

> Read: UTR Pro Tennis Series – Hijikata tops list of best-performing men

The 2021 Tour will kick off with 18 events for men and women in the first half of 2021. Bendigo Tennis Association will host the first Pro Tennis Tour event at the Fosterville Gold Tennis Centre, Bendigo, starting today.

Each UTR Pro Tennis event will practise safe COVID-19 practices and follow all public health advice, to ensure the safety of everyone involved is paramount.

Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) is an international tennis rating system that connects millions of tennis players around the world to help them find better matches locally. UTR reflects a player’s current skill level based on head-to-head match scores, and rates all players across age, gender and nationality on the same 16-point scale.

> For more information on the UTR Pro Tennis Tour, calendar, prize money, event format and to register for events please visit MyUTR.com.