Tennis : It Has Everything--Except McEnroe, Connors

The idea: Create a fifth Grand Slam tennis tournament.

The strategy: Get a sponsor (Lipton) to shell out big bucks ($1.8 million) and bring a big draw (128 men, 128 women) to a resort area in South Florida. Wait for resultant publicity and esteem. Prepare for inclusion among pro tennis’ most prestigious events.

On the blackboard many months ago, it must have looked pretty attractive. The Lipton International Players Championships were set to make their debut Feb. 5-17, 1985, at Rod Laver’s International Tennis Resort in Delray Beach, Fla. The men’s and women’s fields were as large as those at Wimbledon. The total purse was even larger.

And you know how tennis players feel about money. With all that green and all that sunshine to be had, how could the top names in the game possibly stay away?

Well, a couple have managed.

The big names in men’s tennis don’t get any bigger than John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, the players who ended 1984 ranked 1-2 in the world. No tournament can be truly classified as major if one or the other isn’t entered.

Thus, this is the Delray Dilemma. Neither McEnroe nor Connors showed up.

And without them, the tournament has failed to make the tidal-wave splash its promoters had hoped for. The media are covering it as just another stop on the tour. Its flashiest headlines so far came when a chair judge and a crew of linesmen walked out on a match between Ivan Lendl and Larry Stefanki.

Grand Slam Event No. 5? Those plans, at least for the present, have been slammed.

The reasons for Connors’ absence are fairly practical. At 32, he is cutting down on tournament appearances and didn’t want to squeeze in two weeks of tennis between two of his favorite events, Memphis and La Quinta. Connors also has a two-month-old daughter, Aubree-Leigh, which is why he’s spending most of his time these days at his Santa Barbara home.

McEnroe is staying away on principle. Specifically, he doesn’t care for the conditions (he doesn’t play outdoors early in the year), he doesn’t care for the distribution of the winnings (equal pay for men and women), he doesn’t care for the tournament’s attempt to tamper with tennis tradition.

In fact, McEnroe doesn’t much care for Delray Beach, period.

“I have no reason to play Delray Beach. To help them sell condos?” McEnroe said at last month’s Masters. “I don’t make my schedule to help them make money. Why should I play a tournament when it does absolutely nothing for us?

“They say they want to become a Grand Slam tournament. Well, we barely have four as it is. We should try to get those straightened out before adding on.”

And to get his endorsement, McEnroe says that any tournament consisting of both men and women will need to pay them according to the quality and quantity of their work. The Delray Beach tournament will pay men and women winners the same.

McEnroe considers that an injustice, claiming that the men work harder (they play best-of-five sets; the women play best-of-three) and deserve more prize money because they are the names the public pays to see.

“There are too many tournaments,” McEnroe adds. “You can’t have this many events and have two or three players support them all.”

The two players the Delray Beach promoters were hoping for both declined to lend their support. And that leads us to a surprising conclusion, particularly in context of professional tennis: Money can’t buy everything.

That may be the biggest news to come out of this new tournament.

Tennis Notes

Jimmy Connors is, however, committed to play in the Pilot Pen Tournament at La Quinta, running Feb. 18-24, returning to defend the championship he won in 1984. Also entered in the 56-man draw are Yannick Noah, Jimmy Arias, Andres Gomez, Joakim Nystrom, Henrik Sundstrom and Aaron Krickstein. The tournament features a total purse of $375,000, a best-of-five sets match in the final and will run in conjunction with an old-timers event, the $40,000 Hayes Tournament, which is scheduled at the La Quinta Hotel Tennis Club Wednesday through Sunday. Included in the 35-and-over field are Ilie Nastase, Stan Smith, Roy Emerson, Marty Riessen and Bob Lutz. . . . Martina Navratilova, Hana Mandlikova, Pam Shriver and Billie Jean King are entered in the $500,000 Chrysler Women’s Team Championships, a doubles event scheduled for the La Costa Hotel and Spa at Carlsbad March 1-3. Eight doubles teams will compete in the double-elimination event, with the winners splitting a first prize of $200,000.