First of all, the title itself suggests a move toward a less centralized leadership. While nobody ever suggested that Etienne de Villiers had a mandate as a "czar" (although many people think that's just what tennis needs), he was often accused of acting like one, in the worst senses of the word: his detractors say he was too inclined to go it alone, remote, and given to unilateral action (sound familiar, politicos?). The ill-fated round-robin controversy is a good example of his (and therefore the ATP's) preferred style of management at the time. The ATP wanted someone nominally "visionary", and de Villers was not afraid to think out of the box, which is how he landed in one made of pine.
Personally, I liked de Villiers while understanding the complaints lodged against him. The round-robin plan might have been more thoroughly thought out, but if that's what passes for an enormous strategic mistake, I'll take it - any day. You want a risk-taker, cut him him some slack when the gamble fails. Also, while de Villiers' style seemed authoritarian (always a possibility when a great deal of power is centralized), I know for a fact that he wasn't just acting on his "thoughts", or worse yet, his "feelings." As a marketing guy, de Villiers always understood and respected what the numbers told him. And if you looked at the statistics on how often top players met, and the feedback the ATP got from the public, you must acknowledge that the round-robin experiment was, at least on paper, much less of a gamble than a healthy cut at a chest-high fastball.
Under de Villiers, we had a major (failed) attempt at innovation, but we also saw the ATP aggressively embrace Hawkeye. And remember that de Villiers won the biggest and most potentially damaging (to the ATP) battle he fought - the one to realign the Spring calendar, adding Madrid and demoting Hamburg. That case was decided on a razor's edge, and if it had gone the other way the ATP as we know it probably would have ceased to exist - and de Villiers today might be known as the man who killed pro tennis.
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the great victory in the Hamburg case had much less to do with Madrid than with the ATP setting a precedent for acting in what it perceived as the best interest of the pro tour. Thus, the decision will have lasting, positive after-effects for the ATP. It certainly seems to have enshrined the ATP's right to, within reason, run its own show, instead of being subservient to each of 100 individual events, each interested first and foremost in pursuing its own success.
This was, by any standard, a great victory for the institution. Personally, I believe it far overshadows the fact that the top players got their noses out of joint because they didn't enjoy great communication with de Villiers, or felt they were insufficiently consulted on some day-to-day decisions. The day an executive puts the needs of an individual or group of players ahead of that of the institution is the day the system begins to fail. I think history will judge de Villiers kindly.
So let the sleuth work begin. Let's start with something simple - the difference in titles. Compare de Villiers simple "CEO" designation (one which accurately reflected what the ATP expected of him) with the lengthy title Helfant totes behind his name. The feeling I get is that the ATP is drawing back from its previous desire to have a "visionary" leader, and its willingness to live with an autocratic one, in favor of a negotiator, legal expert, consensus-builder and traffic cop charged with keeping the flow of marketing, administration, tournaments and players orderly and sensible.
That the ATP is moving this way is hardly surprising, given the Hamburg controversy, and it also suggests a process that's familiar in politics and other exercises in governance. You have one kind of guy to shake things up and fight battles, another kind to administer the peace that comes out of that process. That is, the willingness to take risks and jeopardize security quickly yields to a longing for order - once the heavy lifting has been done.
Helfant's resume reads MIT and Harvard Law. Whatever his personal style and ambitions may be, the stats suggest that he's a wonk (I don't say that with a sneer; my wife's credentials are virtually identical). Combine that with his title, and you have the makings of a creature of the institution - less an empire-builder than an empire administrator. I can't imagine that the ATP hired Helfant to shake up the status quo, which tells me that the ATP is fairly satisfied with it. My guess is that the ATP, sound of structure and with a renewed sense of its authority over the pro game (thanks to the Hamburg decision), will now turn its gaze "inward" - hence Helfant, whose details suggest that he's most comfortable running the command center (as opposed to actually flying the vessel). Note that he's never been the chief executive in either of his roles at the NHL or Nike.
My guess is that Helfant will turn his attention to the very complex but not necessarily sexy efforts to increase the cohesion and inter-relatedness of this stubbornly international game. I think he might also be looking at fighting a long overdue battle (and one that may be impossible to clearly win in the current economic climate) to improve player compensation, mostly in the form of prize-money purses. What kind of achievement would signal the success of a guy like Helfant (if my guesswork here is at all accurate)? Let's start with this: a more uniform and dynamic approach to prize-money, both how much there is and how it's distributed. Beyond that, he seems well-equipped to market the ATP as an entity, securing those umbrella sponsorships and globally linked deals that are much harder to nail down than it may appear.
I don't anticipate Helfant would target the calendar-related issues that pre-occupy so many of you, and which crop up from time to time, and almost always at the end of the year when pretty much everyone is over-tennised. Let's remember the last major item (or lack thereof) on Helfant's resume: he not a tennis insider. Had the ATP turned to a veteran of the tournament trenches, especially a former player (e.g., Brad Drewett, or Miami promoter Butch Buccholz), the signal would have been clear. This is a player's guy, who will both understand and probably even be deeply drawn to resolving the ground-level problems faced by those who play the game and those who pay them to do it.
But the signal I get from this appointment is that Helfant is a institution guy. And what that suggests to me is that the ATP doesn't feel that the players are discontented with the fundamentals, or how the tour operates on a week-to-week basis. If the ATP felt it had an enormous calendar problem, calling for delicate, complex and perhaps painful negotiations with the tournaments, it would be crazy to turn to an "outsider" unfamiliar with the how the game works or the politics that shape it. As I wrote in yesterday's column for ESPN, that's a job for a Larry Scott.
My guess is that the emphasis now will be on institutional growth and health, at a time when power in tennis has shifted away from the US, to Europe and South America, with Asia looming as a new frontier - a job that is not just less glamorous, but may also be more challenging.
Feel free to use this as a Your Call thread once the comments in my most recent post pass the 1,000 mark.
PS - Getty Images doesn't have a photo of Adam Helfant; I'll have to try to find and add one a little later.
