TENNIS / JULIE CART : ITF’s Plan to Start Rival Tour Reveals Rift With the ATP

The International Tennis Federation’s recent acknowledgment that it was in cahoots with no less a troublemaker than Rupert Murdoch to launch a rival men’s professional tour was stunning in its arrogance but also instructive in revealing the serious rift between the ATP, which runs men’s tennis, and the ITF, which aspires to.

The ITF, with media baron Murdoch’s money, proposed a tantalizing megatour: 10 52-draw tournaments, each with $3.5 million in prize money, all placed on the calender so that they would enhance the ITF’s events--the four Grand Slam events, the Davis Cup and the Summer Olympics.

The idea is perfect in its simplicity and would seem to solve several problems. The tennis calendar is too cluttered, with fans not really aware of which tour events are important and which aren’t. There’s too much taped tennis on television and not enough live tennis. Programmers must think of tennis as some sort of freeze-dried product with a long shelf life. Otherwise, why air the semifinals a tournament that ended two weeks before?

The plan would also have worked to maximize sponsor dollars. Tennis has handfuls of medium-sized sponsors who kick in moderate amounts of money to be part of the game. With fewer sponsors, who each would be required to pony up more money, there would be less of a logjam at events and greater product identification for the sponsors.

When news of the proposed new tour was leaked, the ATP Tour was understandably peeved. But what leverage does it have against the ITF and Murdoch’s millions? The loyalty of the players, who, after all, founded the tour as it exists today? The ATP would go out of business waiting for loyalty from its players.

What cards does the ATP hold that could possibly trump the ITF’s? What if an aspect of the ITF’s new tour was a ranking system that awarded points only for participation in its events? If a player wanted to play at Wimbledon, for example, those ranking points would be mighty desirable. To strip it to its barest bones: Tennis players have allegiance to money and the person or entity who supplies it. Makes them no different than anyone else.

Supposedly, the ITF backed off the proposal because of “premature news leaks,” but the tour couldn’t have had much real financial viability if public scrutiny was enough to torpedo it. It was interesting while it lasted, but what a blunder. The damage to the already shaky relationship between the ITF and the ATP is serious. How in the world are these two important entities supposed to work together now? How do you reconcile and work alongside a group that has professed a desire to put you out of business?

*

What to make of prodigy/teen-aged scholastic genius Venus Williams? Have we been hype-notized by the youngster’s persuasive father, who--even as he invokes the politically correct tennis-dads-are-evil mantra--grows ever more to resemble his own cautionary image.

Williams, who climbed in the WTA’s window of opportunity last year and turned pro at 14, has now played three events. She has won one match. She was impressive in her debut last year in Oakland, leading Arantxa Sanchez Vicario before losing. She impressed not at all last week in Manhattan Beach and then in Toronto.

Williams has potential. As an athlete, she has size, reflexes and power. As a tennis player, she has a lot to learn. She has not been taught how to think on a tennis court, how to plan a point, how to react to an opponent’s change in tactics. She’s not being coached, she’s being drilled.

Richard Williams is coaching his daughter, and his opinion is that she’s getting highly competent instruction. She never hits with players on the tour, although she lives within a short lob of several women pros. Practicing with her talented younger sister, Serena, is not the same as playing pros.

Williams says he works for his daughters, literally. They pay his salary. If that sounds familiar, refer to the Stefano Capriati model of adults quitting jobs while their teen-aged children support them. All in the family, right?

Of course, Williams is not likely to win, no matter what course he chooses. Last year, the family was criticized for allowing Venus to play any pro tournaments, now it’s obvious that unless she plays more than three tournaments a year, she’ll never develop what talent she has.

What’s not clear is what is so pressing about her talent that caused Richard Williams to yank his daughters out of school and move the family to tennis-mecca South Florida? What about her game could not be developed in juniors? What about her social development would not be aided by being in school?

Now comes the news that he plans to take legal action against the WTA so that Serena, upon the occasion of her 14th birthday next month, may also turn pro, even though the rule that Venus took advantage of was changed.

Serena turns pro for what purpose? To play one tournament in her first year then three the next, as Venus has done? Or perhaps for the sponsorship contracts that still come in regardless of--or in spite of--the child’s development?