Meet three of the professionals who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make the Open everything it is.
Mike Rodriguez
Director of Security, US Open
How do you secure a 42-acre sports facility in New York City as it welcomes hundreds of thousands of spectators over a three-week period that often includes the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks?
If you’re the US Open, you hire Mike Rodriguez, who’s been Director of Security for the US Open since 2003, when he retired from the NYPD after 23 years. His last assignment was as a supervisor in the FBI-NYPD joint terrorism task force, where he worked on cases ranging from the September 11 attacks to the USS Cole bombing to the fall 2001 anthrax mailings.
Rodriguez’s affiliation with the Open began in 1997, when he worked as part of the security team to supplement his police work. When he was offered the job of director of security, “what interested me was being involved from the ground floor and being able to design and create and work toward what I thought it should be, especially coming from a counter terrorism experience.”
Rodriguez has instituted a number of significant changes during his time with the Open. He spearheaded the formation of a US Open Command Center that is up and running 24/7. He also shut down Meridian Road, where broadcast trailers set up camp, to foot traffic.
During the Open, Rodriguez relocates from his home in Manhattan to a hotel closer to the National Tennis Center where he holds two meetings each day with the NYPD and other agencies to keep everybody up to speed and in synch—everything from security briefings to when certain marquee players are practicing to special events like autograph sessions are covered—and spends most of his remaining time walking the grounds.
Rodriguez is aided by the fact that he maintains secret clearance with the Department of Homeland Security, so he is included in their briefings. He also sits on two advisory boards—one with the Department of Homeland Security and the other on the University of Southern Mississippi’s National Center for Spectator Sports Safety & Security. The latter organization helps him address an important concern in the public areas of the Open: Where a police officer need employ no subtlety in enforcing the law, it’s different at a sports venue. Rodriguez works hard to let spectators enjoy themselves without becoming overly aware of security. It’s a topic he discusses often with his counterparts from the National Football League and Major League Baseball. “It’s not Fort Knox,” he says, “It’s an event.”
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Rich Kaufman
Chief Umpire, US Open (and Director of Officials for the USTA)**
Rich Kaufman, Chief Umpire for the US Open since 1997, used to be a chair umpire, but he no longer has any on-court authority. He is, however, the prime decider of which chair and line umpires work the US Open (yes, most umpires have to apply to be a part of the event; the application process runs from December to May) and where they find themselves assigned on a given day.
During the year, Kaufman visits other tournaments and watches matches on television, evaluating which umpires he wants at the Open where scheduling, especially during the early stages of the main draw, can be a mental Rubik’s cube. The thirty-five or so chair umpires Kaufman enlists generally call two matches a day and there are a number of considerations that factor in those assignments: he or she has to be from a neutral country, unless the players share the same nationality; they try not to assign an umpire to the same player’s matches in back-to-back rounds; and if an umpire had a bad match with a particular player during the summer, will likely not assign the umpire to one of that player’s matches. (Of less concern is gender: Kaufman points with pride to the number of women umpires who call men’s matches at the Open. “We have taken the lead in that category for a long, long time,” he says.)
Kaufman also enlists about 300 line umpires for the Open. Where chair umpires call an entire match, line umpires change out every hour. To help schedule these professionals, Kaufman uses a computer program, directing it to put experienced umpires not just on the show courts, but also on the outer ones. “We don’t want to have the umpire have to make twenty overrules on Court 17,” he says.
Given the number of matches and the considerations, the biggest challenge Kaufman faces is weather and the havoc it can bring, necessitating more matches, perhaps on more courts than originally scheduled, and inserting greater unpredictability into each hour of the day.
Kaufman isn’t shy about his opinions. One of the first professional chair umpires during the profession’s formative 1980s, he trained many of the people he now supervises. He patrols the grounds of the Open, sometimes watching from discreet perches he’s discovered over the years, and if he notices an umpire communicating poorly or mishandling a tense situation, he will seek him or her out and share his feedback. “I’m not the kind of chief umpire who likes to see an umpire wag their finger at a player; it’s not really my style,” he says.
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Danny Zausner
Managing Director of USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center
Last year, on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, Danny Zausner walked into work to find ten representatives from Con Edison in the National Tennis Center’s board room.
“They told me that two of the four ‘feeders’ that supply all the power to the Tennis Center were down and that if we lost one more feeder there’d be a black out in this area of Queens.”
It’s the kind of expect-the-unexpected moment that Zausner, Managing Director of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, knows can occur at any time during the two most important weeks of his year.
“You don’t need a calendar during the Open,” he chuckles. “You just know that while you’re here, you’ll have to deal with whatever comes up during the course of a sixteen- or eighteen-hour day.”
If the Tennis Center were Oz, then Zausner would be the wizard. He’s the man behind the scenes, with his hand in and on everything from security to guest services to food service to the ticket office to transportation to interacting with the parks department and overseeing capital projects. “Everything but the players on the court,” he sums up. (He also oversees the Tennis Center in its role as the largest public tennis facility in the nation.)
Zausner, who’s preparing for his 11th US Open, formerly ran Ogden Entertainment, a company that managed sports arenas and stadiums worldwide. His vision for the Open was to turn it into the “Disneyland of tennis, with something for everybody. Tennis was here and for the passionate tennis enthusiast we can give you tennis eighteen hours a day. If you enjoy tennis, but want to have a little of everything, we want to give you a lot of everything.” To attain this goal, Zausner has put considerable attention into the food service and merchandise programs, even though their revenue pales next to ticket sales, sponsorship deals, and broadcast rights. He is also forever working with his department heads to improve everything from waiting times in lines to the breadth and selection of food and trinkets, and prides himself on the level of customer service at the Open, which he believes has set a trend in the industry.
“We’re not trying to operate the Open like a kingdom, but we feel like our fans make this a kingdom, and I think I have a pretty good knowledge of what our fans expect from us each and every year. There’s no question that when they come out, they want to look and see what’s different, what’s better than it was before.”