In the Ad Court : Organizing the Manhattan Beach Tennis Tournament Is No Slim Task for Owners Jan and Jerry Diamond

There’s a tennis tournament going on here, somewhere among the corporate tents filled with smiling people hawking watches, lemonade and cars.

Somewhere near where a local restaurant has built a kitchen on a tennis court.

Somewhere by the media tent, where thousands of dollars worth of computers, fax machines and photocopiers is guarded 24 hours a day.

Somewhere close to the racquetball courts, which have been carpeted and transformed into lounges for players and officials.

This is the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles, which has been running since Monday at the Manhattan Country Club.

It is part tennis tournament, part marketing explosion, part logistic nightmare.

Jan Diamond, who along with her husband Jerry Diamond owns the tournament, is in charge of all three parts.

Jan, who lives in San Francisco, has been in Manhattan Beach for about three months--living in a hotel--to set it all up.

“When I get here in May,” she said, “this is just a sleepy little country club.”

If owning a tennis tournament seems like a strange concept, Jerry Diamond explains it this way:

He owns the right to display the players, members of the Women’s Tennis Assn., for a week. Because there is space for only about 60 tournaments on the calendar--there is more than one tournament during a few weeks--not anyone with a few million dollars can have a tournament.

He won’t give the value of the Virginia Slims of Los Angeles, but he said the average tournament is worth between $2 million and $3.5 million.

One of the reasons a tournament is worth so much is the interest by the sponsors.

Jan Diamond starts lining them up almost a year in advance, she said. Virginia Slims pays the Diamonds an amount in excess of the $350,000 prize money, but some of those funds are earmarked for advertising, Jerry Diamond said.

The tournament also has one presenting sponsor (BMW), which pays between $70,000 and $140,000, and 12 participating sponsors, which pay $10,000 to $25,000 each.

The sponsors get varying amounts of on-site advertising, tickets and promotional perks, such as a few spots for employees or clients in a pro-am tournament or the opportunity to have a party at the club.

“We send some of the players down there to have their pictures taken with (the sponsors),” Jan Diamond said.

It’s pure commercialism.

For example, Kraft, the sponsor of the tour itself, has a featured product at each stop. In U.S. tournaments, it is Crystal Light drink mix, so throughout the tournament a vendor walks around the club with a cooler of Crystal Light lemonade on his back, giving out free samples.

The officials and ushers are dressed in outfits made by Le Coq Sportif, which also is a sponsor.

Other revenue comes from ticket sales. But that has been slightly down this year, Jerry Diamond said, because of the recession.

The tournament offers 1,120 seats at the front of the three grandstands at $200 per seat for the tournament. Diamond said those seats normally sell out in advance, but this year only about half were sold. The rest sell on an individual basis for each session.

“People aren’t shelling out $200,” Diamond said, “but they don’t mind shelling out $28 (for an individual session).”

The box seats, at $250 for the tournament, still sell out, Diamond said.

“Everybody reorders those seats,” he said. “Those are handled in divorce settlements.”

The tournament also has large expenses.

Diamond has to pay Manhattan Beach an 8 1/2% tax on every dollar made by the tournament, he said.

Plus, Diamond pays the Manhattan Country Club what he would call only “a significant amount of money” to use the facility.

Basically, the Diamonds take the place over.

About four weeks before the tournament starts, the club starts to change. Three large grandstands that occupy one court each are set up at a cost of $75,000, which includes taking them down after the tournament.

A few dozen tents are erected for the sponsors and concession stands.

The tournament organizers need permits from the city for it all.

“Then the fire marshal has to inspect everything,” Jan Diamond said. “And he’ll give us a checklist of about 20 things that need to be cleaned up or nailed down.”

One of the more difficult jobs belongs to the operators of Manhattan Coolers, the restaurant that sets up a kitchen on a tennis court and serves the players, their guests, the media and other VIPs.

The tournament buys meal tickets from Manhattan Coolers that range from $5-10, depending on whether they are for lunch or dinner, and for players or VIPs. Tournament organizers will hand out about 700 tickets during the week.

But that income doesn’t quite cover the expenses of such an operation, which also includes overtime for some of the employees, Pete Moffett, president of Manhattan Coolers, said, adding, “Our benefit is in the form of public relations.”

The food for the public is provided by the club, which operates concession stands and brings in outside vendors.

And this isn’t the normal sporting event food. One stand sells wine. Another sells churros, a Mexican pastry.

“The tennis crowd doesn’t mind paying a little more money, but they don’t want just a hot dog,” Jan Diamond said. “So we sell gourmet hot dogs.”

When all the construction is completed, only six of the club’s 18 courts are available to club members. The members also lose part of the locker rooms and the racquetball courts.

“Some people complain, but most really enjoy it,” club pro Mark McGuire said. “The members are still taken care of, I think.”

Club members get first chance to buy tickets, plus, as McGuire said, “the chance to see great tennis.”

One of the club’s problems is a lack of parking. It usually doesn’t have to accommodate 6,000-7,000 people and their cars.

The club has a small lot, in which VIPs and players park, and a large lot nearby in which the public can park for $5.

Outside groups capitalize. The Kiwanis Club of Manhattan Beach charges $5 for cars to park across the street at office buildings, which donate the space. Jack Dirksen, a member of the Manhattan Beach Kiwanis, said Virginia Slims parking is the major fund-raiser of the year for the club.

The pro shop experiences a financial bonanza. Jeff Chai, general manager of Super Sports, which operates the club’s pro shop, said the one week the tournament is here makes it worthwhile to operate the pro shop for the rest of the year.

Roger Langner, owner of a Commerce security business, nnsaid the tournament organizers pay about $14,000 and the club pays about $8,000 for security for the week.

About 20 guards are on duty at any given time.

“We don’t usually do event security,” Langner said, “but we’ll do the Virginia Slims because it’s not like a rock concert. You have a little different clientele.”

There are about 90 volunteers, and Jan Diamond said she could use more.

“We simply can’t function without huge numbers of people who just do this for the love of the sport,” she said.

Some of the busiest are the volunteer ushers. Besides helping fans find seats, they are the last line of defense against those who try to crash the box seats.

“This guy came up to me and said he had a box seat and this girl was his sister, and I said she must have a lot of brothers because you’re the fifth guy who’s said that,” usher Erik Casanova said. “Someone else said this guy was her fiance, and he had a wedding band on.”

Casanova told another story of a man who was trying to get the rest of his family to the front of a line to come into the stadium, so he said “isn’t that Martina Navratilova practicing on that court over there?” Casanova remembered. “And about 10 people left.”

Donald Ward, in his third year as an usher at the tournament, said many of the problems the ushers have come not from the regular fans, but from the players’ guests, who are sometimes “really obnoxious. They seem to have an inflated view of their importance.”

Another large human resource is the 80 kids, mostly ages 10 to 15, who are chosen to chase tennis balls. McGuire, who is in charge of the ball people, holds three tryouts.

“We go over the basics of rolling the balls, catching the balls, the stance,” he said. “The most important things are being able to concentrate on the match and get balls from one end of the court to the other quickly.”

The ball kids get free visors, caps, shorts and “a lot of autographs,” McGuire said.

But by Monday, it will all be over. All the ushers be home. The grandstands will come down. Court seven will no longer be a restaurant.

And what about Jan Diamond?

Well, there’s a few days of closing-down details to worry about. “Then,” she said, “I collapse for about a week.”