Men’s Group Hasn’t Quite Found Its Way

Is it a player or a pawn?

Deciphering the role of the International Men’s Tennis Assn. in the power play going on outside the lines in professional tennis isn’t easy, even for the fledgling players-only trade association.

“The IMTA has created a lot of reaction and action,” said Henri-James Tieleman, the administrative director of the group. “But if you ask if the players’ lives are being affected and changed for the better, no. We haven’t achieved what we could achieve yet.”

Formed in March, the IMTA has tried to improve communication between players and the ATP Tour, as well as to gain information on business issues such as pension plans, prize money and the marketing and promotion of tennis.

“Since we started the IMTA, things have been going in the right direction,” said Wayne Ferreira of South Africa, an Australian Open semifinalist in January who has been serving as the front man of the group. “It’s working [and] hopefully, it’ll continue.”

IMTA counts among its members an eclectic mix of active and inactive players, top singles and doubles competitors, a slew of mid-level players and some up-and-coming young stars.

The leaders include Tieleman, the owner of an Italian tennis-clothing firm who never played professionally, and a pair of injured veteran workhorses of the ATP Tour, Ferreira and Laurence Tieleman, Henri-James’ younger brother.

Ferreira, a 31-year-old former ATP Tour player-council member, has been sidelined recently because of a torn tendon in his right hip. Laurence Tieleman, 30, is a 10-year pro contemplating retirement because of a 2001 back injury that has relegated him to the comeback trail on the challenger circuit.

The highest-ranked player among IMTA supporters is world No. 2 Lleyton Hewitt. He has a $1.5-million lawsuit pending against the ATP, prompted by a $106,000 fine levied against him for failing to do a television interview at a tournament in Cincinnati in August. In January, the fine was reduced to $20,000 on appeal, but Hewitt believes he was punished unfairly and wants an apology from ATP officials.

Jeff Tarango -- an American best remembered for a 1995 incident in which he argued wildly with a chair umpire and became the first player in Wimbledon history to walk off the court in the middle of a match -- is also on a recently released list of 62 IMTA supporters. So are 1993 French Open doubles champions Luke and Murphy Jensen, retired brothers who were known as much for their flamboyance as their tennis prowess.

“We’ve been in the game so long, I see both sides of it,” Luke Jensen said. “My thing is, there is no tour and there’s no tennis without the players.”

Still, IMTA hasn’t fostered credibility with the ATP.

“In my opinion, a lot of the players who first signed on to the IMTA did it to get information,” said tour veteran Todd Martin, the president of the ATP player council, which provides input to player representatives on the tour’s board of directors. “And now that they have, that’s it. They feel like, ‘No, the IMTA does not represent me, the ATP does.’ I don’t think the 62 players who signed the form are a fair representation of all the players in the ATP.”

Laurence Tieleman is concerned that valid issues and opinions may be obscured in attempts to minimize the IMTA. He also said that the tour owed all players full disclosure of and as much assistance as is needed in understanding complicated business issues, adding that the ATP has not provided it.

“Really, I’m a bit upset and surprised about the way the ATP is handling itself in all this,” Tieleman said. “We wouldn’t have 62 players signed up with us if everything was perfect, and I think it’s time for a change.”

Matthew Rapp, ATP vice president of communications, contends that tour officials have been as forthcoming as possible with information, but it is up to players to be sure they understand it.

“The fact of the matter is, most of these guys have spent their entire lives playing tennis,” he said. “There are some very bright guys out there who are interested in and understand a lot of this stuff. There are others who never paid any attention to it. It’s just the nature of the sport. Many of them have not finished high school, let alone gone to college. There’s a lot of stuff going on, and it’s not simple.”

IMTA’s genesis can be traced to 2001, when a $1.2-billion marketing deal between ATP and ISL Worldwide fell through, contributing to recent financial and promotional woes of the tour, and when Laurence Tieleman suffered a back injury. Tieleman, ranked as high as 76th in 1999, suffered a herniated disk in February of 2001, underwent surgery in July of that year, has not played in a tour event since and is headed for retirement. Under ATP policy, Tieleman said, he does not qualify for a pension, despite a decade-long career.

“I had a lot of time on my hands, and it seemed like a good time to look into these types of things,” he said. “I didn’t really think it was going to come down to this.”

Rapp said the ATP would not comment on an individual player’s status, but added: “There’s some flexibility, but it’s objective flexibility. I’m sure if he’s saying he doesn’t qualify, it’s because he doesn’t meet the minimums.”

According to Andre Silva, ATP player services tour manager, 3% of the tour’s total purse money each year is set aside for retirement funding.

Rules call for at least 125 and no more than 160 singles players and 40 doubles players to qualify for funding each year. There are 384 dues-paying, active-player members of the ATP, but the maximum limits in the pension plan potentially pose problems for mid-level and low-ranked players.

Briefly, to qualify for pension funding, players must be ATP members in good standing and must qualify for the main draws of 11 tour-level tournaments -- or, be among the first 125 to reach the minimum qualifying standard set by the ATP. To be vested, players must qualify at least five times in their careers, with no more than six years between qualifying years.

“I’m sure there are many other players that might be in the same situation,” Henri-James Tieleman said of his brother. “If he would have been receiving information all these years, he might have taken different actions and gotten different policies. Probably we would have even started this earlier.”

Still, the IMTA remains a nebulous concept to many players who are still grasping to understand the political issues involved.

“A lot of the players have signed up as members, but they’re a little nervous, a little uncertain right now,” Ferreira said.

That uncertainty and disagreements about the best ways to handle infighting involving players, officials and the various organizations involved in the sport came to a head just before the French Open with IMTA’s release of a list of its supporters. Not everyone, even among those who may have supported the original purposes of the group, agreed with the move.

Rising young American James Blake asked to be taken off the list of backers. “I think it was originally reported that I was in it, and just the fact that they got those names was the first step in having ill feelings toward them because they were never supposed to release that and they did,” Blake said in a news conference at Wimbledon.

“I was worried about what exactly the lawyers and the people trying to run that, what their intentions were.”

Many in the group are taking a wait-and-see approach to recent strife and leaving Ferreira to handle negotiations with ATP officials.

Said Cristiano Caratti, a top-200 player who had his best season in 1991: “Right now, I gave my name, and if they asked me to do more than that, I’d have to ponder the situation.”

Mark Knowles, an ATP player-council representative who also supported IMTA, is still trying to figure out where he stands.

“I’m not really taking sides, but just trying to help the game,” he said. “That’s my main focus. It’s a tricky situation, but you could argue both sides. We have to come up with a game plan.”

Times staff writer Lisa Dillman contributed to this report.