The women’s tournament in Monterrey, Mexico, will change category in 2024, going from a WTA 250 to 500, the women’s tennis circuit and the organizers of the event announced Tuesday at a press conference. “The Monterrey Open will become a WTA 500 event in 2024” after 15 editions, WTA CEO Steve Simon said in a video shown during this press conference held in the host city.
As for the director general of the tournament, Hernan Garza, he announced that the prize pool would increase to 920,000 dollars (840,000 euros) thanks to this change of category, against 235,000 dollars (214,000 euros) in 2023. The next Monterrey tournament will take place from 19 to August 25, 2024, a week before the US Open, the fourth round of the Grand Slam. This requalification is part of a restructuring of the WTA circuit aimed at better remunerating female players, who are much less endowed than men, in particular by going from 13 to 17 WTA 500 events in 2024.
The WTA 500 category is the third most important, behind the Grand Slam and the WTA 1000 category, and ahead of the WTA 250 and 125 categories. The number indicates the number of ranking points won by the winner of the tournament (the Grand Slam events Slam worth 2,000 points). The first winner of the Monterrey 250 version tournament was the French Marion Bartoli, and the last, the Croatian Donna Vekic. The most successful will remain the Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
