NEW YORK — The rule the WTA approved in July stopped being a document this week and became a procedure. Jessica Pegula, the world No. 3 and a member of the WTA Player Council, said Wednesday that genetic sex testing of players had begun at the Cincinnati Open, whose main draw opens Thursday. A policy written in the abstract is now being applied to a live field.
Pegula’s account was narrow and procedural rather than political. “I know some of the testing has started this week,” she said, adding that the feedback reaching her had been uncomplicated and that she had heard no objections from players. She also said the tour had spent roughly the past year consulting the locker room, collecting responses and circulating educational material explaining how the process works — which, in her telling, is why nobody arrived in Ohio blindsided.
The measure she was describing is the WTA’s revised Women’s Eligibility Policy, approved in July and effective from 2026. It requires every player to submit to a one-time genetic test for the SRY gene, a marker used to establish biological sex, and it has the effect of barring transgender women from competing on tour. The governing body said the policy followed a periodic review taking in consultation with its members and shifting standards elsewhere in women’s sport, and acknowledged in the document itself that the issue is a sensitive and complex one.
The direction of travel is not confined to tennis. Months before the WTA acted, the International Olympic Committee said it would introduce SRY gene testing for the 2028 Games, and gender eligibility has become a live argument in American women’s basketball, where the WNBA has drawn criticism for not carrying an explicit policy of its own.
What has not been established publicly is nearly as significant as what has. It is not clear whether testing will be administered at tournaments beyond Cincinnati, by what deadline players must comply, or what follows for anyone who does not. The tour declined to discuss the rollout when asked about it this week, which leaves a player representative as the only figure describing the process on the record — an unusual position for a change of this weight.
Nor is the underlying science as settled as the policy’s structure implies. The geneticist who identified the SRY gene has argued publicly that using it as the deciding instrument for who counts as a woman in sport is misguided and too crude for the biology involved. That criticism was aimed at track and field, where the same test has been adopted, but it transfers directly, and the tour has not addressed it head-on.
The reaction inside the game has been quieter than the reaction outside it. Aryna Sabalenka became the first world No. 1 to back the rule, framing it as a matter of competitive fairness. Coco Gauff took a more divided position, supporting the principle of protecting the women’s category while objecting to the hostility toward transgender people that the announcement stirred up. Neither has been contradicted by a player speaking publicly against the policy.
Cincinnati is a logical place to begin. It is the largest single gathering of the women’s field between Canada and New York, a 96-player draw that will hold most of the top 20 for the better part of two weeks. The tournament’s opening days also happened to be unusually idle: rain closed the grounds entirely on Wednesday without a ball struck in the second qualifying session, and the withdrawal list has thinned the field further. A great deal of administrative business gets done on days like that.
There is also no live case driving any of it. No transgender player is competing on the WTA Tour, which makes the policy pre-emptive rather than responsive — a distinction that has shaped much of the criticism from outside the sport, and one Pegula has effectively conceded by describing the change as the tour updating itself to match what other governing bodies have done.
Testing is expected to continue through the US Open for players not in Ohio this fortnight, which means the rollout runs straight through the sport’s biggest American window — a fortnight in Mason already reshaped by absence, and then a Grand Slam. By the time the main draw begins in Flushing Meadows on Aug. 30, the policy will have stopped being news and started being routine. That is usually the point at which a rule becomes permanent.
