Steve Simon provides more details behind the tour's new rules regarding maternity leave, special seeding, and the evolution of the tour's attire rules.

WTA Insider: Let’s start with the process. What is the process behind making changes to the rulebook?

Simon: It's an exhaustive process to say the least, even for the most simple rule changes. Proposals or changes to the rules come from a variety of origins. In our player meetings they will bring up issues and we will look at them as they apply to the rules. The tournament meetings have their take on things. And clearly our staff members who implement the rules and monitor and manage the rules, always come up with things where they're finding issues with the rules as we go forward. 

Once that rule is brought forth, it goes to the rules committee, which is made up of player and tournament representation. It's a subcommittee of our board and staff and they will review the request and the current rules in the book and come up with potential language that would address the issue that was brought up.

If the rules committee feels that rule and the language is something appropriate for consideration, it then has the player council and tournament council review it and provide their respective feedback. Where appropriate we'll also get constituency feedback, meaning individual players and/or tournaments and/or outside parties that are appropriate. Then we'll bring that feedback back to the rules committee to consider, and it will come to an agreement as to whether it wishes to recommend the rule for approval to the board or not. 

There are some exciting changes coming to the WTA calendar in 2015

There are some exciting changes coming to the WTA calendar in 2015, most notably the grass court season going from four weeks to five weeks - three lead-up weeks, then the two weeks of Wimbledon. This year there will be three weeks of lead-up tournaments before the big one at Wimbledon, starting with a pair of International-level events the week of June 8 ('s-Hertogenbosch and Nottingham) and then Premier-level tournaments during the weeks of June 15 (Birmingham) and June 22 (Eastbourne). Check out what a few of the biggest names in the business - John McEnroe and Michael Stich - had to say about the expanded grass court season in the below video, courtesy of CNN Open Court.

One of the other big changes comes early on in the year, a week after the Australian Open in fact - the Premier event in Paris is gone, but another Premier event in Antwerp takes its place. Former World No.1 Kim Clijsters is back as Tournament Director for the BNP Paribas Fortis Diamond Games. "After seven years, world class tennis is coming back to Antwerp," she said. "The new BNP Paribas Fortis Diamond Games will not only become a high-level tennis event, but much more than that." And the year-end Tournament Of Champions in Sofia is gone as well, replaced by the WTA Elite Trophy, which brings a dozen of the best players in the world to Zhuhai, China to fight for $2.15 million.


There's another new stop on the tour - Prague will host the International-level Sparta Prague Open the week of April 27, opposite the Grand Prix SAR La Princesse Lalla Meryem in Marrakech, Morocco. Two more cities saying goodbye are Oeiras, Portugal and Nürnberg, Germany. Oeiras spent 16 years on the WTA calendar with former Top 10 players Anke Huber and Maria Kirilenko among its champions; Nürnberg only had a short two years but its champions were noteworthy, with WTA Rising Stars Simona Halep and Eugenie Bouchard winning their first WTA titles there in 2013 and 2014.