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The 35-year-old Yen-hsun Lu is currently recovering from shoulder surgery, not playing since last May and working on his comeback in Taiwan. Like many other players and coaches, Lu is against the ITF reforms and two-ranking system, describing it as the worst possible thing they could have down to the lower-ranked players and making it tough for the most of those to even enter tournaments and compete.
"I am Rendy Lu; ATP player; and just recovering from a shoulder operation. I'm practicing with some juniors and ITF players in Taiwan. I have heard about their problems with the new ITF Tour and how much they are suffering.
I feel sorry for them, and I want to support them. As a member of the ATP council, I can say that I have never heard that the ATP decided to take the points away from the Futures and that my colleagues or I wanted this. It’s ridiculous that since 2019 we have two rankings; the ATP and the ITF World Tennis Tour ranking.
And I realize that under these conditions, it’s nearly impossible to make a smart tournament schedule for the upcoming players. So I ask ITF to stop this ranking nonsense immediately; stop the World Tennis Tour ranking since there is only one ranking which gives a sense for tennis, that being the ATP ranking.
In addition, I got aware that the reduction of playing possibilities through the ITF makes it nearly impossible for a lot of players to participate in professional tennis tournaments. This doesn’t give any sense for me.
It should be our goal to motivate these players to compete; to play our wonderful sport instead of trying to kick them out of it. So I ask ITF to open up the qualifications and let more players compete. This has to be done immediately.
And there are so many more mistakes the ITF is responsible for: A) not to have a protected ranking for these players, B) not to give a fair chance for double players, C) to allow pre qualies under not acceptable circumstances, D) to install huge fines for these players if they play challengers instead of WTT tournaments, E) to implement entry fees.
So I ask ITF to stop this; I ask ITF not to try to grab the money from the poorest of the tennis players and implement rules which are fair for the sport. So I only can give my full support to my colleagues who suffer under these ITF changes.
I will also bring this point in the next ATP council meeting on the agenda and will ask the other council members to find a solution for this next generation of players. It’s a shame what the ITF is doing and I fully support the fight against this. Let all players stay together and fight against the new rules."