7/13/2005
One of the great mysteries—and disappointments—of the tennis landscape in recent years was the way that the senior tour just simply fell off the face of the earth. One minute, there was Jimmy Connors, spearheading what appeared to be a successful, low-key, classy series of tournaments featuring all the bells and whistles found in, dare we say it, your typical, wildly popular golf event (you know, the cocktail party attended by all the players, the Saturday morning pro-am).
The next minute, bye-bye senior tour. Vaya con Dios. You’re outta here. Jimbo has left the business.
We don’t really know if John McEnroe is trying to revive the senior tour or just being paid a king’s ransom to throw his considerable weight behind an exploratory one-off venture back into the old-guys-in-short-pants industry in the U.S., but he’ll be the star of the LTU Champions Trophy, a four-day event that will take place August 18–21 at the Sportime Tennis Club in Amagansett, on New York’s Long Island.
Amagansett is part of the Hamptons, an enclave of beautiful people (many of whom will tell you they’re Hamptonites not because of the glamour, but because they like old potato farms and the ocean; it’s like when guys tell you they read Playboy for the excellent articles) and home of some of the nastiest weekend traffic jams you’re apt to find this side of Santa Monica.
McEnroe and his colleagues held a Manhattan presser yesterday at Métrazur, a Grand Central Terminal restaurant (awesome crabcakes!). The colleagues were the usual sponsor-types (LTU is a German airline company) plus actor and Parkinson’s Disease research advocate, Michael J. Fox. Part of the tournament proceeds will go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, an organization founded by Fox, whose huge career was laid low when he developed Parkinson’s. Among other things, Fox starred in popular TV sitcoms and the Back to the Future movie trilogy.
Most of the press pariahs there were Hollywood Reporter types, so there were few questions about the actual tennis event, and plenty about Fox and the brilliant career that was cut short by his affliction. So, for the record, the event will be an eight-man round-robin, featuring (in addition to McEnroe) Goran Ivanisevic, Pat Cash, Guillermo Vilas, and the ever-entertaining ball wizard, Mansour Bahrami. There will be doubles exhibitions in addition to serious singles play each day. If you’re thinking of attending, keep in mind what I wrote above about the traffic—I was serious.
Curiously, as Mac explained, the last big-time senior event in the U.S. was to have taken place in New York’s Central Park in mid-September of 2001. Then came the attacks of 9/11. Of course, the event was yet another casualty of that horrific day. When asked why the senior tour disappeared in the first place, Mac acknowledged it was because Connors and his rival and late-life pal Bjorn Borg finally called it quits—that was the extent to which the tour was driven by fan allegiance and recognition.
But if Jimbo could pack them in, why not best-selling author, popular television commentator, and crossover tennis star McEnroe?
Press conference highlight: When Fox was asked how much money he hoped to raise for his foundation through the tennis event, he replied, “If we do what we did on the first weekend of Back to the Future I’d be ecstatic . . . .”
He’s a game, gutsy guy. Hopefully a lot of folks will turn up to support the LTU Champion’s Trophy.