
Head of Australian women's tennis, Nicole Pratt, says the lack of Aussie players in the top 100 is "alarming" as the 2016 Australian Open nears.
There are five wildcards available for Australian women at the tournament.
However, Pratt says Tennis Australia will not use all five available wildcards if players a re not deserving.
“Myself and (Australian Fed Cup captain) Alicia Molik have been pretty firm that we’re only going to award them if players are deserving,” Pratt told the NT News.
“We’ll assess that before each grand slam, as we’ve done this year. But I’m hoping we are in a position where we’ve got a couple of players deserving come next year.”
Sam Stosur and the soon to be naturalised Daria Gavrilova and Aija Tomljanovic are the only Australians currently ranked inside the top 100 in the world.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do. A target right now we need to strive for is to work on getting as many players as we can between the top 100 to 250,” Pratt said.
“Right now, if you exclude Jarka and Casey, we have no players in that ranking category and that’s quite alarming.
“We need to put strategies in place, because I don’t believe we’re going to get more top 100 players if we don’t start getting players in that ranking band.”