Unhappy With ATP, Players Come Together

There have been occasional shots over the years at the leadership of the ATP, some of them unintentionally amusing. Marcelo Rios, for one, always could be counted on for a line or two.

But sometimes a whisper can turn into a scream.

Here, the metaphorical whisper will be morphing into the International Men’s Tennis Assn. Expectations are that IMTA, a trade association that will represent the players’ interests, will be formed and up and running during the Masters Series event at Key Biscayne Fla., in March, its organizers said Sunday.

Wayne Ferreira of South Africa, who reached the semifinals at the Australian Open in January, circulated information to a wide-ranging group of players in Melbourne, Australia, and plans on having additional discussions with others at Indian Wells and Key Biscayne.

Player discontent with the ATP did not develop overnight. Ferreira and Laurence Tielman of Belgium, and lawyers Jeff Weingart and Rob Freeman, who are working with the fledgling trade association, said in interviews Sunday that the issues have been festering.

The players complained about a lack of knowledge about the business side of the tour, for example, the management of the pension fund. And the collapse of a $1.2-billion marketing deal with the now-bankrupt firm ISL in 2001 became a flash point. Additionally, the players are worried about “what they perceive as the declining popularity of men’s professional tennis worldwide,” according to their mission statement, and concerned that they do not have a “players-only” organization to represent their interests.

“It’s been a slow process, gradually getting worse and obviously ISL really affected it quite a lot,” said Ferriera, who turned pro in 1989, and now lives in Northern California. “There seem to be a lot more [issues] each year. The players all have their own problems and stuff they’re unhappy about, and everybody goes to the ATP and tells them their problems, which kind of get pushed underneath the carpet straightaway. It has got to the stage where everybody’s sort of annoyed. We need to get something together where all the players can be in a group and work together and get these issues resolved.”

Tielman, who has been on the tour for about 10 years, has an international background. His father is Dutch, his mother Italian, and his parents worked as economists for the European Community. His mother still is with the organization in Brussels, but he said she had no interest in tennis.

“There’s been a lot of problems with the way the ATP has been running things,” Tielman said. “It needs to be changed now. Drastically. I think a lot of players are not happy with the way things have been going over the years.”

Ferreira said he had not limited his efforts to one or two geographic blocs of the world. Young American players such as Andy Roddick and James Blake have been supportive of the ATP in the past on other issues.

Australian Lleyton Hewitt, based on his own dissatisfaction with tour administrators, is backing these attempts at change by IMTA along these lines, and Switzerland’s Roger Federer is understood to be supportive as well.

“I’ve spoken to almost every player from pretty much every nation in the world and they all feel exactly the same way,” Ferreira said. “There’s nobody that has turned around and said to me, ‘I don’t believe what you’re doing is a good thing. I believe the ATP is doing a good job. You’re wasting your time.’ ”

But that was before Ferreira ran into Todd Martin in Memphis, Tenn., on Tuesday. Martin, president of the ATP’s player council, said there was always room for improvement, but he was concerned whether the change would be worth the risk.

“I would be concerned about possibly having to give up part ownership of the tour,” Martin said. “ ... The ATP has got its flaws. But it’s an organization that does a lot of great things for the sport.”

Larry Scott, the ATP’s chief operating officer, said there had been some meetings with the concerned players leading the formation of IMTA.

“I know our player leadership and management are open to suggestions from players about how players best wish to be represented,” he said Monday.

“However, there is no professional sport in the world, of the scope of tennis, where the athletes have more voice in decision-making through their elected leadership.

“There will always be issues where there are differing opinions about how the players should be represented, but I’m confident that the player representatives most actively engaged in the business of the circuit feel that the organization does a good job of balancing the different perspectives and representing their interests well.”

There is no classic labor-vs.-management divide in tennis as in the NHL, NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball. There are three player representatives and three tournament representatives, as well as Mark Miles, the chief operating officer, on the ATP’s board of directors.

Bob Kain, president of the management firm IMG, said it was hard to work in harmony under that current structure.

“It’s like nobody is happy,” Kain said. “I hear the same things on the tournament side.... I don’t think [the players] are all wrong. I’ve been at this so long, I’m not sure this isn’t the best way for them to go forward.”

Hewitt Decision

The ATP and Hewitt have issued a statement, saying a decision has been reached on Hewitt’s appeal of a six-figure fine at the Cincinnati tournament last summer. Hewitt was hit with the penalty for not doing an interview with ESPN.

Just what the conclusion was is pure guesswork because the parties agreed to a confidentiality agreement.

Ferreira was bothered that the matter had to go that far, saying it should have been dealt more professionally.

Weingart said, “The way some of the players are looking at it is that the Hewitt dispute is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. As Wayne pointed out, it never should have happened. The players should not feel like they’re so adversarial with the organization that’s supposed to be representing their interests.”