WTA Now Requires Every Player to Take a Genetic Sex Test

One cheek swab, one lifetime, no exceptions

The WTA's new Women's Eligibility Policy takes effect this week. Every player on tour, no exceptions, must submit a cheek swab, blood, or saliva sample to test for the SRY gene, according to the BBC. That gene sits on the Y chromosome and drives male biological development. Test negative, you're eligible. Test positive, you face further medical review before you can compete.

Players only take the test once in their career. But the WTA is also requiring every player to sign a document acknowledging they could face disciplinary action if they refuse, the BBC reported.

This replaces a 2024 policy that let transgender women compete if they kept testosterone below 2.5 nmol/L for two straight years. That standard is gone. The new rule is pure biology: one gene, one test, no case-by-case appeals process built around hormone levels.

Why now, for a problem nobody's currently facing

There are zero known transgender women currently competing at any level of professional women's tennis, according to Sports Business Journal. Tennis writer Ben Rothenberg, whose newsletter Bounces first reported the policy details, noted the same thing.

So the WTA is building an entire testing infrastructure around a hypothetical. If nobody's currently affected, why force every single player, from Iga Swiatek to a qualifier ranked 400th in the world, to hand over a biological sample and sign a legal document under threat of discipline?

The WTA's own answer, per its statement carried by the BBC and tennis365, is that the policy isn't reactive to a specific player. It's about setting "a clear eligibility standard" ahead of need and aligning with what other governing bodies have already done. World Athletics adopted the SRY test in September 2025. World Boxing mandated it in May 2025. EssentiallySports reported that federations pushed the WTA to fall in line with the IOC and World Athletics, and that some wanted clarity locked in before the 2028 Olympics.

If the IOC, World Athletics, and World Boxing all use the same genetic marker as their standard, a tennis-specific carve-out becomes harder to defend once any eligibility dispute hits an arbitration panel. Uniformity across sports has value if you're trying to avoid a patchwork of rules that different federations can be sued over.

Rothenberg's framing, and what it leaves out

Tennis365 credited Rothenberg with the claim that the WTA is the first independent professional women's sports league or tour to mandate genetic screening for all its athletes, not just suspected cases. Other bodies test at the international competition level. The WTA is applying this to every player on its entire tour, which spans hundreds of women across all ranking levels.

EssentiallySports added useful historical context that the BBC and tennis365 skipped: sex testing in sport isn't new. The Olympics ran chromosome checks in the 1960s, then abandoned the practice by the 1990s after it was criticized as unreliable and unfair, producing false positives that ended the careers of women with naturally occurring intersex conditions. The SRY test is a narrower, more targeted version of that old approach, but the history explains why civil liberties and athlete advocacy groups have historically been wary of "genetic screening" language in sports governance, even when the stated intent is narrow.

The tennis legend who's already weighed in

Martina Navratilova, an 18-time Grand Slam singles champion and longtime critic of transgender inclusion in women's sports, called it "a step in the right direction" in a post on X, according to tennis365. Navratilova was coached in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Renee Richards, a transgender woman who played professionally on the tour from 1977 to 1981, the last known transgender competitor at that level.

The WTA, for its part, says it's trying to walk a line. "The WTA recognises that this is a sensitive and complex issue and is committed to treating all players with dignity and implementing the policy in a respectful and thoughtful way," the organization said in its statement, per the BBC.

What's actually unresolved

The policy doesn't specify what happens procedurally to a player who tests positive for the SRY gene but has always competed as and identified as female. It says only that a positive result triggers "further medical assessment" before a ruling on eligibility. The WTA hasn't published details on what that assessment involves, who conducts it, or how fast a decision gets made. Players will find out when the first positive test happens, if it ever does.