Wimbledon reduced to ‘exhibition’ status after ATP points stripped, fears British No1 Cameron Norrie

Wimbledon will be reduced to nothing more than an “exhibition” tournament in the absence of ATP ranking points, says Cameron Norrie.

The British No1 fears the top stars will stay away from the competition with players “not really playing for anything” following the decision amid tournament organisers’ refusal to end a ban on Russian and Belarusian players.

“Obviously it's an extremely difficult situation with everything going on with the war, but for me it's tough,” said Norrie.

“You know, having a home slam and not gaining any ranking points from that, and the tradition of it, you're not really playing for anything. You're playing this almost like an exhibition, so for me it was tough to see that.

“Obviously it's a really tricky situation but I would have liked to see it still have points, to still have something on the line.

“This changes the ranking systems a lot, they've taken away almost 6,000 points from the whole system out of nowhere, so it's going to interfere with the rankings, and then a lot of players that did well at Wimbledon last year are going to be dropping.

“I'd like to have points. Obviously having a home slam, and not many tournaments on the grass already, and then suddenly there's no points there. I understand the situation is tricky. And there's complications everywhere. But for me, that's how I feel.

“Wimbledon is still such a special event. But I think you'll see a lot of top players not playing, you know, just resting and getting ready for the hard-court events, especially those that don't worry too much about the money.

“So I could see a lot of players, well maybe a few top players, not playing because of that. It'll be interesting to see.”