ATP Outlines New Tour Schedule : Men’s Tennis Council May File Lawsuit Over Defection

The men’s tennis war intensified Friday when the Assn. of Tennis Professionals unveiled a tentative schedule for its own 1990 tour and the Men’s Tennis Council hinted at a lawsuit to stop it.

With players Mats Wilander, Boris Becker, Andre Agassi, Stefan Edberg, Jakob Hlasek and Tim Mayotte at his side in a crowded meeting room at a midtown Manhattan hotel, Hamilton Jordan, chief executive officer of the ATP, revealed the format of the new tour as well as a preliminary calendar.

“It is a tennis calendar that makes tennis sense,” Jordan said.

Apparently, such appreciation was in the mind of the beholder.

“They’re going to have to rebuild Rome,” said Marshall Happer, administrator of the Men’s Tennis Council, which runs the current Grand Prix tour.

Happer indicated that the council, the governing body of men’s tennis since 1974, may have legal ground for preventing the ATP from conducting its own tour.

“It seems unfair. . . . They may be putting everyone out of business,” he said. “The implications to tournament directors is you play with us or you don’t get any players.”

According to the ATP, there will be 19 Championship Series events, each offering $1 million in prize money, replacing the Men’s Tennis Council’s 31 Super Series events.

The ATP also wants to lower from 18 to 8 the number of top-level events in North America, which Jordan said was vital in correcting an imbalance with Europe and the rest of the world.

“The Europeans fared well,” Jordan said.

However, the same cannot be said for several U.S. cities, among them Los Angeles, which apparently will lose their top-level status. Other cities that may fall to lesser, or World Series, status are San Francisco, Washington, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.

According to sources among tournament directors, the only North American cities guaranteed Championship Series events are Indian Wells, Calif.; Philadelphia; Key Biscayne, Fla.; Cincinnati; Toronto, and Stratton Mountain, Vt.

Volvo, which owns 6 Grand Prix Super Series events, would keep only 1, Stratton Mountain, in the top level.

World Series events would have no player designations, which means that top-10 players would not be required to play in them. Instead, these tournaments would be free to offer appearance fees to attract players.

There is also no limit on prize money in such tournaments, which means that, considering appearance fees and ATP points that will be awarded, exhibitions may be on the way out.

“The tournaments are going to mean more than exhibitions,” said Wilander. “I think they’ll (exhibitions) be much less attractive.”

Until early January, the ATP will accept applications from tournament directors for specific weeks on its 1990 schedule. A six-member application committee then will award tournaments after studying such criteria as playing facility, surface, prize money and market.

Bob Kramer, promoter of the Volvo/Los Angeles tournament, said he believes Los Angeles has a chance to remain a top-level stop on the 1990 ATP tour.

“I don’t see how they can keep us out,” he said. “Maybe the (prize) money will be a problem, but I don’t think Los Angeles should be anything other than the top echelon.”

Under the ATP’s plan, its players would be required to commit to either 10 or 11 non-Grand Slam tournaments. Ray Moore, an ATP board member, said 6 top-10 players would be designated for each Championship Series event and would face heavy fines if they withdrew.

The ATP released a tentative calendar that it called generic, in that it does not list specific cities with dates, only specific continents and the surface on which the event would be played.

For example, the weeks of March 12 and March 19, 1990, are North American hardcourt Championship Events.

Moore, who is a representative of the Newsweek Grand Champions at Indian Wells, said he expects the tournament to bid for Championship Series status for March 12, with March 19 as its second choice.

With top-level events dropping from 31 to 19 and with only 8 in North America, Moore conceded that there would be many unhappy tournament directors.

“Some people are going to be dropped,” he said. “It now seems that many people are going to have a change in their status.”

Jordan brushed aside the 11th-hour Men’s Tennis Council proposal that Happer made Thursday night in an effort to bring the ATP back into the Grand Prix fold.

“My preference is to stay with our own tour,” Jordan said. “If they had put that document on the table at the U.S. Open (when the ATP announced its 1990 tour plans), we probably wouldn’t be standing here now.”

Jordan said all of the top-ranked players had signed pledges to join the ATP tour except Ivan Lendl and Jimmy Connors. Jordan said Lendl had signed a letter of intent to join and that although Connors has not signed anything, he has made public statements in support of the ATP tour.