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Australian tennis player Ellen Perez is caught in a tough spot due to a tight scheduling overlap between the WTA Finals in Cancun, Mexico and the Billie Jean King (BJK) Cup in Seville, Spain.
After competing in the doubles final in Cancun, she's expected to immediately head to Spain to represent Australia in a crucial BJK Cup tie.
Perez took to Twitter to express her frustration over the scheduling conflict, which will require her to travel nearly 8,000 kilometers overnight. She wrote on Twitter:
"Anyone got a private jet and want to fly me from Cancun to Seville tomorrow night to make it in time for BJKC Tuesday 10am match. Really not impressed with this scheduling disaster. Why do I have to be punished for this?😔"
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Will Boucek, a doubles strategy analyst and the host of the Doubles Only Tennis Podcast, provided an update on when the doubles final at the WTA Finals will take place following a rain-hit Saturday.
"The Doubles Final will be played tomorrow [Monday] at 1:30 pm #WTAFinals"
Adding to the conversation, journalist José Morgado highlighted the distance and scheduling issue, saying:
"Laura Siegemund and Ellen Perez will play the BJK Cup Finals, that start on Tuesday. 7,814 kms away."
Perez responded to Morgado’s tweet, emphasizing her disadvantage compared to her doubles opponent Laura Siegemund, who has more time before her BJK Cup match. She said:
"Well I play Tuesday 10am... she plays Thursday luckily. Big cya later to making it in time for me👍"
This is not the first complaint about the tournament's organization. 18-time Grand Slam champion Martina Navratilova criticized the WTA leadership over the fiasco, citing "a sequence of bad decisions" and suggesting that it might be time for new leadership, preferably a woman.
"Maybe it's time for a new leadership but for me personally, being a women's association, I've been involved for such a long time from the beginning and we've only had three women at the head of it. I think it's time. Hopefully, when we get a new leader it's a woman first of all because there's plenty of them that are qualified for the job. I know one particularly," Navratilova said.
How Ellen Perez and Nicole Melichar-Martinez advanced to doubles final at WTA finals
In a match that lasted 97 minutes, the pair of Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Ellen Perez defeated Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe in the semifinals in Cancun to reach the doubles final at the WTA Finals. This marks the duo's fifth final together in 2023.
The American-Australian pair were on the verge of victory in the second set, serving at 5-4. However, their opponents did not give in easily. Dabrowski and Routliffe, the reigning US Open champion, won the tiebreak, forcing the match to be decided by a match-tiebreak.
In the match-tiebreak, Melichar-Martinez and Ellen Perez prevailed 10-6 to move into the summit clash. Here, they will take on Laura Siegemund and Vera Zvonareva, who downed second seeds Storm Hunter and Elise Mertens in the semifinals.
