by Pete Bodo
Mornin' everyone. I'm at a family event today, celebrating my niece, Sarah, having earned her Masters Degree. She's going to be a psycho-therapist. Should I be offended by her offer of a special "family discount" for me? Anyway, I'm missing Arthur Ashe Day/Media Day at the at the US Open, but I'm back in New York tonight.
A few days ago - before Etienne de Villiers announced that he won't be seeking to renew his contract as CEO of the ATP Tour - I had an interesting conversation with a man who's making a pitch for de Villier's job: you might recognize his name, and not just because he's a regular reader and sometime contributor to TennisWorld: John P. McEnroe, father of - well, you know. . .
That's right - tennis has its very own John McCain (the parallels are too rich to pass up). "Senior", as many simply call him, is 73 (he's got McCain beat by over a year, or at least four Grand Slams), he's as bald as McCain, and has always been just as feisty (if that adjective can still be applied to the presumptive Republican nominee for the US Presidency).
"I don't seem myself as the John McCain of the ATP, I see me as the John McEnroe of the ATP," he told me, when I noted the parallels.
You think a 73-year old has to be just a little, er, forgetful, or slow? Not senior. I learned not to underestimate him years ago, when I turned down his offer to provide an extra set of copyediting and fast-checking eyes for the book (Tennis for Dummies) that I wrote with his second most-famous son, Patrick. After the book came out, Senior sent me a few pages of notes detailing errors he caught or changes he would have recommended. Every one of them was on the mark, and I felt foolish for having arrogantly assumed that Senior was just looking to meddle in something he knew nothing about. You ever write a book and want a copy editor, call John McEnroe Sr.
Anyway, John recently sent a letter to a group of the most influential administrators, agents, promoters and players in the game, including Roger Federer, and Rafael Nadal's right hand man, Benito Perez-Barbadillo. I'm reproducing it here, verbatim:
ATP Tour Chairman
Gentlemen:
As you all probably know, I am the father of John, Mark (my “normal son,” the lawyer) and Patrick McEnroe. I have met some of you at various tournaments, Davis Cup ties, etc.
To get promptly to the point, I am interested in succeeding Etienne de Villiers as Chairman of ATP Tour, Inc. I am strongly of the view that the best interests of men players, particularly the top ranked players, have been very badly served by M. de Villiers, to put it mildly, and by his predecessors.
The rules for participation on the Tour are an abomination. My own view is that NO player should be required to play in ANY TOURNAMENT if he doesn’t wish so to do. Also, as long as a player’s ranking entitles him to entry, he should be able to enter any tournament without requiring a minimum of tournaments each year. This is a position I have held for over thirty years.
You are all too young to remember that, in the early 1980s, I represented the “quintessential quintet” (Borg, Connors, Gerulaitis, McEnroe (John) and Vilas), in negotiations with the Men’s International Professional Tennis Council (“MIPTC”) over newly proposed rules. Those rules included proposed "hard designations" by the MIPTC for the top hundred players on the ATP computer. You will not be surprised that the QQ were not happy with that proposal. We were able to negotiate an arrangement whereby the QQ and the Council agreed in advance what the "designations" would be.
I am aware that the Mercedes-Benz international sponsorship of the Tour ends at the end of this year and will not be renewed. As your new Chairman, it would be a major priority of mine zealously to work to find a new sponsor. Also, I would work diligently to find opportunities to monetize various aspects of the Tour in order to ensure its financial foundation is solid.
Additionally, I have represented John and Patrick in connection with all of their legal needs. This includes all of their broadcasting contracts with BBC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, Tennis Channel and Australia’s Channel 7, agreements with respect to special events, endorsement agreements with Nike, Dunlop, Wilson, Snauwert, Sergio Tacchini, etc., not to mention a myriad of endorsements for companies not directly involved with tennis, book contracts and so on. I know and have interfaced with all the constituencies in professional tennis for many years.
Finally, I am currently Of Counsel to the internationally recognized law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison LLP, where I practiced commercial law since 1967. From 1974 through 2000, I was a partner in the Corporate Department.
I would be most pleased to meet in person at a convenient time and venue (the US Open site?) with any or all of you, your agents and anyone else you deem appropriate. Please feel free to call or e-mail me with any questions, comments or suggestions you may have. Thank you all in advance for your consideration of this proposal.
Sincerely,
John P. McEnroe
All right. Let's assume Senior is every bit as much in touch with his faculties as I say he is. And believe resume isn't prettied up, either - not one iota. Ask any person in a position to know. For close to two decades, Senior was as close to the political heartbeat of the game as any man alive, and he has as full and nuanced a grasp of the history of tennis, especially labor relations in tennis, as anyone.
In choosing deVilliers as CEO, the ATP Tour went outside the game to bring in a marketing whiz. Given the way the relationship soured, you have to wonder if the ATP Board wants to travel the same road, bringing in an outsider with no meaningful experience in the trenches. The answer to that question is a pretty powerful comment on the viability of Senior's candidacy.
I asked Senior point blank if he felt, given his age, that he could handle the job. He said: "My head is fine. I'm in terrific shape, except for a bum knee I have because somebody ran into me with a bicycle on Fifth Avenue back around Christmas."
I'll back him up on that; for years now, I've bumped into Senior and his sublimely gracious wife Kay, while they were power-walking on the track around the reservoir in Central Park.
And what kind of response has Senior received from the Arlen Kantarians of this world? "Well," he said, "Nobody has said, 'What, are crazy, you old coot?' Look, I understand the first reaction. My own kid John went on Letterman a while ago and said, 'My dad's crazy.' But that was because I'd shown some interest in doing television commentary, and John's attitude was that two (McEnroes) is company, three's a crowd. I admit that even Kay looked across the table at me when I told her I might make a pitch for the ATP job and said, 'Don't you think you're a little too old for this?'"
"What exactly did you say," I asked.
"I said 'No'," Senior thundered.
Trust me, folks, he is, as they say, "tan, rested and ready to go."
Call me nuts, but I take this bid seriously (for which Kay may want to strangle me), and I think that convincing others of the same may be the biggest battle facing Senior. But Ive known CEOs and directors of major corporate and non-profit boards that were the same age as McEnroe. There's no question that in relative terms, he can match any of them when it comes to experience in, and an understanding of, the field. And when John McEnroe Sr. calls someone like a Phil Knight of Nike, the guy picks up the phone.
Most important, it's pretty clear from McEnroe's letter and basic point-of-view that he's a player's guy, and his philosophy is tailor-made to alleviate the concerns and discontents of the top players. Senior has never waffled on the issues he mentions above: he's a players' guy, through and through, and always has been. He's especially a top players' guy. He told me: "I've never had a problem with guarantees (appearance fees), either. There's a reason (Luciano) Pavarotti got more money than the guy holding the spear at the back of the stage. Boxing is the ultmate one-on--one sport, and boxers get guarantees. don't they?"
Senior is friendly to the point-of-view holding that the players destroyed their own union when they went into partnership with the tournament directors to form the ATP Tour, and gradually became hostages to the very machine they created. His attitude as the leader of the players facing the promoters and administrators of the tour would be: "Sure we're willing to talk and play ball, but not under these rules. Let's start by rewriting the rules."
In choosing de Villiers to run the ATP, the players (and other constituents) invested their faith in the concept of a tour driven by marketing concerns and sensibilities. But as was the case during the heyday of the "quintessential quintet", the top players ultimately became disgruntled with the workload placed on them. That's pretty much where we are, again. Some insiders will tell you that the thing that killed deVilliers was not the misbegotten experiment with round robin, or other marketing-based tweaks that he suggested or implemented, but his remote, detatched style.
The words that keeps cropping up in conversations about de Villiers are "alienation" and "lack of confidence." On the other hand, personal style aside, de Villiers won the biggest battle of his tenure (the make-it or break-it Hamburg case), he helped lift the Masters Series events to unprecedented heights, and he masterminded the move that will bring the year-end ATP Championships to London starting in 2009. Those achievements are anything but inconsequential, but the anti-deVilliers forces have built a momentum that isn't going to be stopped.
The biggest obstacles facing Senior's candidacy are part and parcel of his strengths: he's old-school in a way that may dovetail with the agenda of the top players (basically, he advocates a free-market tour), but those same players may be more entrenched and vested in the new ruling culture than they know. It probably doesn't help Senior's cause that he's an American, at a time when the Europeans and South Americans are feeling their oats and more willing to express long simmering resentments against US control of the game. As well, the current top players probably are much more inclined, culturally, to compromise, build consensus, and trust bureaucracy. I don't see the top Europeans as having the same rambunctious individualism as did the Quintessential Quartet.
It will be interesting to see if the powers-that-be take Senior's pitch seriously and give him a chance to make his case to the players and their representatives. A few weeks ago, John Jr. gave an interview and basically articulated the same points his father made in the letter above, vis a vis designations and committments. "I called him on it," Senior told me, "And he told me, 'Yeah, I finally caught on.'"
I'm hoping Senior gets on to say hello and perhaps answer a few questions, but I didn't ask about that so I'll leave it in his hands.