Fans have reacted to Elena Rybakina's withdrawal from the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo after the introduction of performance byes meant she would have to play in the first round.

Rybakina was set to compete at the WTA 500 event as the third seed, meaning she was expected to receive a bye through the opening round along with the other top-ranked players at the tournament.

However, the WTA announced that it would be trialing performance byes, meaning that World No. 6 Maria Sakkari and World No. 10 Caroline Garcia were given a pass through to the second round instead, while Rybakina was set to face Linda Noskova. The 24-year-old criticized the WTA on social media before withdrawing from the event.

The 2022 Wimbledon champion's coach Stefano Vukov also took to social media to vent his frustration at the concept of performance byes.

"Just to make things clear, there is no explanation of what a performance bye is. What does this mean? Do we add byes to help performing players? Or do we take away ranking earned byes? And isn’t ranking itself a sign of performance?" he wrote.

Vukov added that performance byes were nowhere to be found when Rybakina went straight from the final of the Portoroz Open to the first round of the Japan Open last year.

"Last year we came from a final in Europe and played in Japan 2 days later and performance byes were nowhere to be found," he wrote, "The issue is always the same of communication. This will also apply from Tokyo 500 to Beijing 1000 next week. 4 performance byes will be awarded."

Fans have since shared their agreement with Vukov and Rybakina on social media. Several drew attention to the fact that Vukov had tagged the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), led by Novak Djokovic.

"That's what djokovic was trying to say since the pandemic in 2020 Every player should join the PTPA ... because ATP and WTA aren't working for players any more ... they are working for the money and we should thank rybakina and her team for speaking against the establishment," wrote one.

"Glad to see @ptpaplayers is tagged on this, since they are there to look out for PLAYERS alone. No conflicts of interest," added another.

"WTA is collapsing. It's not a tour it's a circus," commented another fan.