Victoria Mboko and Naomi Osaka are unseeded in the Cincinnati Open draw, but they received byes in the opening round due to their final runs at the National Bank Open in Montreal . How is this possible and how does it work specifically?

What is a performance bye?

The WTA Rulebook explains a performance bye as “the type of bye awarded to a player based on her previous week’s performance as determined by the WTA when approving the calendar and draw sizes,” which clearly makes the rules pretty flexible. This caused some controversy two years ago when Elena Rybakina expressed her disapproval of having to play the opening round in Tokyo despite being ranked higher than Maria Sakkari and Caroline Garcia. The WTA awarded performance byes to two Guadalajara semifinalists to help them g

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