Tennis Players’ Group Cancels 2 South Africa Events

The Assn. of Tennis Professionals, which last month strongly defended its decision to play two tournaments in South Africa in 1990, announced Tuesday that it is canceling them instead.

“We’re not in the business of canceling tournaments,” said Vijay Amritraj, ATP president. “But the most important thing is that South Africa has not been a representative member of the international community.”

The group’s decision to withdraw its sanctions from tournaments in Johannesburg and Cape Town is a reversal of the stand the men’s group took when it defended its position during Wimbledon.

Hamilton Jordan, chief executive officer of the ATP, insisted at that time that the South African tournaments were acceptable, although he said the government’s apartheid policy is as repugnant as civil rights violations in the Soviet Union and China.

However, by Tuesday, the ATP, through Amritraj, said that South Africa stood apart because apartheid, the government’s policy of racial segregation, is scorned virtually worldwide.

The decision to cancel the tournaments was made in the vote by the ATP tour board after hearing the plea of Arthur Ashe, who argued against playing in South Africa.

Ray Moore, formerly a South African Davis Cup player, spoke in favor of the tournaments and maintained that they should remain on the schedule. Moore is also an ATP board member.

“For moral and practical reasons, it just isn’t feasible to have these tournaments in South Africa,” Amritraj said.

The tournaments, announced eight months ago, were to be World Series or lesser events on the new 1990 ATP Tour. Amritraj said that the pressure of world opinion as well as the chance of a ban from the Olympics for those who play in South Africa led to the ATP’s turnaround.

“This issue was going to overshadow everything we were doing on the tour,” Amritraj said.