Breaking: WTA to Require Genetic Sex Testing for All Players
Following cultural tides, the women's tennis tour is mandating a strict new eligibility requirement.
Big news to break here on Bounces today, at the messy intersection of women’s sports and gender issues.
Bounces can report that the Women’s Tennis Association has enacted a policy requiring that all WTA players must undergo genetic sex testing in order to maintain their eligibility to compete on the WTA Tour.
While there are zero known transgender women currently active at any level of professional women’s tennis—and there haven’t been any for nearly half a century—the phantom threat of trans women in women’s sports has gained traction in recent years, primarily as a moral panic fomented by Republican lawmakers and pundits seeking a culture-war wedge issue for political benefit.
Now, in a decision that may reflect a political shift in the organization, the WTA Board has decided to heed the movement’s growing traction within sports.
Starting this month, the WTA is taking the unprecedented step of requiring all of its players to undergo genetic testing to weed out any women who may have a specific genetic marker that suggests traces of male biology. This, as far as my research has shown, will make the WTA the first independent professional women’s sports league or tour to mandate such genetic screening for all of its athletes.1
“I acknowledge that if I fail to undergo [genetic sex testing] as requested by the WTA or compete in a WTA Tournament in which I, to my knowledge, am ineligible to compete under this Eligibility Policy, the WTA may take disciplinary action against me…I further acknowledge and agree that such action may result in (among other things) a specified period of ineligibility to participate in WTA Tournaments, which may lead to the reason for my ineligibility becoming public knowledge or being the subject of public speculation.” —Fragment of new document which must be signed by all WTA players.
I’ve decided to make this entire in-depth story, including the new WTA eligibility policy document obtained by Bounces, free to read for all. But if you can, please subscribe to Bounces. Your support makes this sort of reporting possible. -Ben
The new WTA policy that I am reporting on here has not yet been publicly added to the WTA rulebook or website. Instead, the most recent update to the 2026 WTA Rulebook refers only to a shifting “WTA Women’s Eligibility Policy” that can be provided upon request.
Women’s Eligibility Policy
All players are subject to the WTA Women’s Eligibility Policy (“Women’s Eligibility Policy”), as amended from time to time, which addresses the eligibility requirements for entry into and participation in WTA Tournaments. For the complete and current Women’s Eligibility Policy, please contact WTA Legal at Legal@wtatennis.com
The policy linked on the WTA website’s rules page (at the time of publication of this story) was a document most recently updated in October 2024.
To understand the dramatic changes the WTA is making with its new rules and regulations, I think it’s best to first understand the previous policy.
The WTA’s Former “Women’s Eligibility Policy”
The 2024 version, the most recent prior revision of a policy that has evolved many times2, used inclusive language at its outset:
“This policy is intended to facilitate the participation in WTA Tournaments of transgender players and players with differences of sex development who have a female or non-binary gender identity, in a safe and supportive environment that is free from harassment and abuse, and in line with the WTA’s policies prohibiting any form of abuse, harassment, discrimination, or violence against any person, regardless of age, race, sex, gender identity, nationality, disability, or religious affiliation, while also seeking to maintain fair and meaningful competition conditions for all players participating in WTA Tournaments.”
The 2024 policy provided a pathway, with certain testosterone thresholds, for “a biological male with a female or non-binary gender identity” to gain eligibility to play on the WTA Tour if she reached and maintained the required low testosterone levels.
…to be eligible to compete in WTA Tournaments, a biological male with a female or non-binary gender identity must demonstrate to the satisfaction of the WTA Medical Manager that they meet each of the following requirements:
3.1.1 They must provide a written and signed declaration, in a form satisfactory to the WTA, that their gender identity is female or non-binary, and they must maintain a female or non-binary gender identity for so long as they wish to retain eligibility to compete in WTA Tournaments.
3.1.2 Before they compete in their first WTA Tournament, the concentration of testosterone in their blood must have been below 2.5 nmol/L continuously for the previous twenty-four (24) months.
3.1.3 The concentration of testosterone in their blood must remain below 2.5 nmol/L at all times thereafter (i.e., whether they are in competition or out of competition) for so long as they wish to retain eligibility to compete in WTA Tournaments.
…3.3.2 The following are not required in order to be eligible to compete in WTA Tournaments: (1) legal recognition of the player's female or non-binary gender identity; or (2) surgical anatomical changes.
The 2024 policy did not affect the vast majority of women playing on tour. Instead, the only players who would have been subject to evaluation were those who self-declared or could be otherwise identified: “the WTA Medical Manager may investigate, at any time, whether a player who has not filed a declaration under this policy needs to establish their eligibility to compete in WTA Tournaments in accordance with this policy.” The WTA Medical Manager, the rule continues, could only investigate cases “in good faith and on reasonable grounds based on information derived from reliable sources.”
Also of note: the legal language near the end of the eight-page document includes a clause that “This policy is governed by the laws of the state of New York.”
The WTA’s New “Women’s Eligibility Policy”
While the 2024 policy used inclusive language, the 2026 policy—which ostensibly already went into effect on July 1st, according to the document—focuses on narrowing definitions to exclude athletes who might’ve previously been welcome, and also makes clear that this wide-ranging policy affects every player.
Introduction
The purpose of this policy is to preserve the integrity of women’s professional tennis and maintain fair competition conditions for all players participating in WTA Tournaments…
…This policy will come into effect on July 1, 2026 and will replace the previous version of this policy from that date onwards. It forms part of the WTA Rules and is binding on and must be complied with by all players…
…This policy distinguishes between biological sex and gender identity, and between biological females and biological males, solely to the extent necessary to ensure that the policy is clear and has its intended effect. There is no intent to disrespect or question the gender identity or the dignity of any person.
Instead of a pathway toward eligibility based on testosterone levels, the new WTA rules mandate a genetic test, normally administered via a cheek swab, to determine the presence of the SRY gene. This would only be a one-time test for each athlete: genetic makeup does not change within a person’s lifetime. The SRY gene is a small section of DNA, typically found on the Y chromosome, which triggers the development of testes instead of ovaries in a fetus.
The WTA’s new sex testing program is being administered by Colorado-based Phuel Sports Science.
From the document:
WTA Tournaments are open to all women tennis players… “Women” means those individuals who satisfy the following conditions…:
A player must demonstrate their eligibility to compete in WTA Tournaments by means of SRY Screening.
If the SRY Screen is negative for the presence of the SRY gene, the player will be permitted to compete in WTA Tournaments. Unless there is reason to believe a negative result is in error, this will be a once-in-a-lifetime test.
If the SRY Screen is positive for the presence of the SRY gene, the player will not be permitted to compete in WTA Tournaments pending further medical assessment in accordance with clause 3.2.
There can, however, be variations which complicate that binary pattern.
If a player tests positive for the SRY gene, they will only be able to continue competing in WTA events if they can prove that “they have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or another disorder of sex development that means they have never experienced the physiological effects of either Male Mini-puberty or Male Adolescent Puberty.”
(“Male Mini-puberty,” for those unfamiliar with this strange endocrinology phrase, is a process which the document describes as “the hormonal surge of gonadotropins and testosterone which occurs in early infancy, spiking at two to three months postnatal age and ending at around six months.” In other words, if anything male-coded ever had biological effects within the person’s lifetime, even if only in the cradle, the person would be deemed ineligible to compete.)
To public knowledge, the current WTA player pool consists exclusively of cis women who were assigned female at birth. But because biological sex is not as purely binary as many assume, genetic tests can yield surprising results in rare cases, even for people who have lived their entire lives as one gender. Although such shocking results are rare, they can be traumatic, and can feel particularly existential when they become career-threatening for an athlete.
Though most of the outcry about trans women in women’s sports is a recent culture war phenomenon, the harm caused by such tests is not a brand-new issue. An article in the 2002 journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise discussed “the stigmatization and emotional trauma experienced by individuals screened positive” in female “verification” tests given to Olympic athletes:
“Genuine sex-impostors have not been uncovered by laboratory-based genetic testing; however, gender verification procedures have resulted in substantial harm to a number of women athletes born with relatively rare genetic abnormalities.”
The WTA’s new policy document seems to acknowledge the potential for its tests to inflict such trauma, proactively promising support for affected players:
At the request of a player whose case is being assessed under this policy, the WTA will offer professional counselling or such other support services as the WTA Medical Manager deems appropriate in the circumstances and will pay the costs charged by the counselor or other service provider for providing such assistance.
The document also acknowledges, in the final line of the form which players must sign to accept the policy, that the private pain could also be accompanied by a public spectacle if the process becomes contentious:
Player Acknowledgement and Agreement of Eligibility Form
I, the undersigned player, acknowledge that I have read and agree to comply in full with the WTA Women’s Eligibility Policy (the “Eligibility Policy”). In particular (but without limitation):
I agree to submit to and cooperate in full with SRY Screening requested by the WTA further to the Eligibility Policy.
I agree to assist and to cooperate in full with the enquiries and investigations of the WTA Medical Manager conducted further to the Eligibility Policy.
I acknowledge and agree to comply with the conditions set out in clause 4.1 of the Eligibility Policy.
I acknowledge that if I fail to undergo SRY Screening as requested by the WTA or compete in a WTA Tournament in which I, to my knowledge, am ineligible to compete under this Eligibility Policy, the WTA may take disciplinary action against me in accordance with clause 5 of the Eligibility Policy and the Code of Conduct. I further acknowledge and agree that such action may result in (among other things) a specified period of ineligibility to participate in WTA Tournaments, which may lead to the reason for my ineligibility becoming public knowledge or being the subject of public speculation.
Here is the full policy document, attached and downloadable for those who might like to peruse it in its entirety:
One line that caught my eye in this revision: perhaps illustrating the striking political shift which this new policy represents for the WTA, the 2026 document no longer orients itself legally under progressive New York law as the 2024 policy did, but instead roots itself in deep-red Florida, where courts would figure to be considerably more conservative on this issue.
This policy is governed by the laws of the state of Florida, excluding Florida conflict of law principles. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the WTA Rulebook or WTA By-Laws, the validity, legality and/or enforceability of this policy may only be challenged before a federal or state court located in Saint Petersburg, Florida, which is the WTA’s principal place of business.
The Landscape of Transgender Topics in Women’s Tennis and Beyond
This is the first time I’ve written at Bounces about transgender issues in professional tennis, precisely because I don’t think there really are any.
As I alluded to above, only one transgender woman is known to have ever attempted to compete in women’s professional tennis: Renée Richards, who became a national sensation in the 1970s after she successfully won a court decision that granted her admission to compete in women’s tournaments.
Richards, who played stateside events in her mid-40s, had some notable success—even making the final of women’s doubles at her debut U.S. Open in 1977—but did not disrupt the competitive balance of the sport and failed to inspire any successors.
As Richards wrote in her 1983 memoir Second Serve:
“Most of the officials whom I queried subscribed to what I came to think of as the “floodgate theory.” If I was allowed to play, then the floodgates would be opened and through them would come tumbling an endless stream of made-over Neanderthals who would brutalize Chris Evert and Evonne Goolagong. Of course, this was sheer nonsense.”
Richards, a fascinating character who remains active and engaged on these issues at her current age of 91, shifted her position on inclusivity after her own playing career ended. Richards now argues that trans women should not be permitted to compete in women’s sports like she was able to do herself.
(For more on Richards, you can pre-order Julie Kliegman’s forthcoming book Finding Renée Richards, which I’ll have more about soon on Bounces.)
The first documented sex testing policy in tennis history was created to block Richards in 1976. Though no active WTA player is being specifically targeted by this new policy to my knowledge, the WTA board still wished to “secure” and “preserve the integrity” of the sport in case any hypothetical transgender athlete might come along in the near or distant future, wanting to compete in professional women’s tennis.
This framing of a gender policy as guarding against a threat echoes the International Olympic Committee in March, which called its barring transgender women—using the same SRY gene screening test as a mechanism—“protection of the female category.” The IOC decision followed decisions by the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) and the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), both of which could be traced to pressure from the Trump administration and its “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order.
This WTA policy aligns the tour with the new Olympic guidelines, and my understanding is that this is not a coincidence in the WTA Board’s timing. The decision to do that, however, was a wholly elective one by the WTA Board: the WTA is not a constituent governing body affiliated with the IOC and has no obligation to follow its lead or to have congruent rules. The relevant tennis body that works in conjunction with the Olympics, rather, is World Tennis (formerly known as the International Tennis Federation).
But for both the WTA—and even the entire Olympic movement—the “protection” issue has been against a phantom threat, almost completely hypothetical despite the hullabaloo. In the entire history of the Olympics, only one openly transgender woman has ever competed in any women’s event at the Olympics: Laurel Hubbard, a weightlifter from New Zealand who failed on all three of her lift attempts at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
There are all sorts of more urgent, tangible issues facing women’s tennis, and women’s sports more broadly. But because of its cultural resonance, the topic of transgender women in women’s sports has caused wildly outsized cultural clutter. There’s no good reason why I—probably like several of you reading this—can name two swimmers who finished off the podium at an NCAA event four years ago. That’s how obscure you have to get to find actual examples of trans women making any waves in sports. There’s no degree of statistical significance.
Still, this issue has become an obsession for some—most notably one vaunted 18-time major champion. After developing a years-long obsessive fixation on the topic that has expanded into wider bigotry toward trans women in broader society, Martina Navratilova tweets and retweets anti-trans comments and content—often ranging far beyond the issue of sports eligibility—on an average of many times each day.
I went to check how many times Navratilova had tweeted or shared anti-trans content on the day I wrote this article—Saturday, July 18th—and found a staggering 15 separate instances as I scrolled through just one single day of her prolific timeline.
Navratilova did not cause this change in WTA policy—she is not on the board and her influence on the organization is likely not outsized—but she will certainly applaud it.
Thankfully, few active WTA players have ever felt any need to expound similarly on this non-issue, and mercifully they rarely get asked about it in interviews or press conferences.
When WTA No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka went on Piers Morgan Uncensored last December to promote her “Battle of the Sexes” against Nick Kyrgios, Morgan asked her about possibly playing trans women.
Sabalenka said it was a “tricky question,” then said that “I have nothing [against] them, but I feel like they still got a huge advantage over the women and I think it’s not fair on women to face, basically, biological men.”
As I wrote after that deeply unnecessary match:
Another unwelcome element of the discourse around this match: obsessives over the boogeyman non-issue of trans women in women’s sports have also latched onto this result as a reason to trumpet anti-trans rhetoric anew, saying that Kyrgios’ win over Sabalenka proves that male athletes are a threat to women’s sports. Presciently, earlier this month on The Body Serve podcast, host James Rogers said that “This reprise of the so-called ‘Battle of the Sexes’ is a Trojan horse for the anti-trans movement to infiltrate tennis.”
I don’t know if that mission was a conscious core motivation of the event’s organizers, but it was another definite downside on this sad day in which a whole lot was lost and nothing was gained.
Late last year, Ukrainian player Marta Kostyuk made comments that brushed against issues of gender and biology—in an interview that appeared garbled by its publisher—about top players having an advantage because of naturally higher testosterone levels.
“When I look at these players, I have my own skills, but at the end of the day, they are all much bigger than me, much taller than me, much stronger than me,” Kostyuk was quoted as saying. “We all have different biological structures. Some have a higher level of testosterone, some have lower. I know players who are good players who have higher levels of it. It’s just natural, they don’t take anything. I’m sure of that. It’s just the biology of their body.”
How Kostyuk would purport to know anything about other women’s testosterone levels was unclear.
While my focus as a reporter has always been on professional sports, there was also a quiet decision by the United States Tennis Association to ban trans women from competing in sex-specific categories late last year, as reported by Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket. That move, as Kabas clearly traced in her reporting, can also be attributed to pressure from Republican lawmakers.
One last additional item which I don’t believe has been reported or widely noticed previously. Before this new policy, the WTA had already dabbled in some anti-trans policy language. In the 2025 WTA Safeguarding Code, first published in December 2024, one phrase singled out trans women for exclusion: “No persons who were born or identify as male will be permitted in WTA locker rooms.”
Update (Sunday July 19, 4:30 pm ET):
About eight hours after the initial publication of this story, the WTA sent this statement to Bounces:
“The WTA’s Women’s Eligibility policy is designed to promote equal athletic opportunities in women’s professional tennis and maintain fair competition for all players participating in WTA tournaments.
Since first being introduced in 1975, the eligibility policy has undergone periodic review in light of developments across international sport. Following the most recent review, which included consultation with WTA members and evolving standards across women’s sport, the Board approved a new policy beginning in 2026 based on biological sex.
The updated policy is intended to provide a clear eligibility standard for participation in WTA tournaments. Eligibility to participate in WTA tournaments will be confirmed through a required, one-time screening process for the SRY gene. Player screening will begin in 2026, following all appropriate confidentiality and data privacy safeguards and concurrent with a comprehensive player engagement program.
The WTA recognizes that this is a sensitive and complex issue and is committed to treating all players with dignity and implementing the policy in a respectful and thoughtful way. Additional detail can be found in the full policy.”
The WTA has also updated its website to officially publish the new policy today.
More on this topic to come here, and I will continue to follow this story at Bounces as it develops. -Ben
I’m using “professional women’s sports league or tour” to mean just that, and not including Olympic-affiliated federations like World Boxing or World Athletics. This WTA policy has no known precedent in organizations like the LPGA, WNBA, NWSL, PWHL, AFLW, or similar.
This story already turned out to be plenty long, but if there’s interest, I could do a follow-up piece about how the WTA’s rules around gender identity and verification have evolved over the decades.
This is so disappointing. The anti-trans moral panic is ABSURD. This is not a problem. It has never been a problem. And Navratilova's descent into TERF radicalism is destroying her legacy. (At least in my eyes.)
Two things. First, this makes sense in the light of the IOC decision to adopt SRY screening (as it is correctly called: because the check for SRY is a first step, and CAIS and Swyer syndrome are exceptions which allow participation in the female category). The IOC adopted it because it couldn’t ignore the effects of not doing SRY screening - as it had in 1992 and 1996 - when Imane Khelif, who is an XY male with 5-ARD (see the Wikipedia page), same as Caster Semenya, won in the female category in boxing. that put female opponents at serious risk because males can punch much harder for the same weight than women; it is due to testosterone and other birth advantages.
Khelif is emphatically not trans, but is male; wrongly thought to be female at birth.
Second, you write: “because biological sex is not as purely binary as many assume”. This is wrong. Biological sex is absolutely binary: male and female. Phenotypes (the bodily appearance) vary a lot but even with DSDs (eg Khelif, Semenya) one can determine a sex, and that sex is only male or female, based on whether they have a body organised for making sperm or ova (even if they don’t produce any). In wrong what you did, you’re straying into a field that is frequently misreported. Please don’t.
In doing this, the WTA is joining athletics, boxing, cycling, swimming and winter sports (under the FIS), triathlon, rowing and some others I may have forgotten. This is not an outlier; it’s a return to a technology that was understood and used in 1992, but whose use was stopped *gainst the wishes of female athletes* in 1999 by the IOC on advice which, in retrospect, was unscientific.
It’s a cheek swab, in case anyone was wondering. Quick, fast, only needs to be done once and gives everyone confidence about their opponent. A lot less intrusive than dope testing.