Andreescu enters 2022 Italian Open using protected ranking

Although 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreescu has been away from the tennis court for a while, it appears she is preparing to make a return.

The Canadian has been announced as an entrance for the 2022 Internazionali BNL d'Italia Rome, and will be using her protected ranking to make her return during the clay season.

Protected Ranking is a system used in professional tennis where a player’s ranking is frozen because of an injury break. This is to ensure that while the player is recovering from the injury, their ranking does not fall making it increasingly difficult to qualify for tournaments. However, there are a few rules for using this system.

It is used by players coming back from an injury after a time period of at least six months and the assigned rank is based on the average ranking for the first three months of the injury.

Andreescu competed at the 2021 US Open, where she lost in the fourth round after a grueling match against Maria Sakkari. As she failed to defend her points from her 2019 title, her rankings fell to 20th on the women’s singles list. 

The 21-year old is likely to use her protected ranking to enter the French Open, as she bids to capture her second career Grand Slam title.