VANTAGE POINT BY EUGENE L. SCOTT. OUT OF THE ARCHIVES. A MUST READ. LOTS OF USTA SAME OLD, SAME OLD.

Written by: Staff on 4th October 2014

VANTAGE POINT BY EUGENE L. SCOTT. OUT OF THE ARCHIVES. A MUST READ. LOTS OF USTA SAME OLD, SAME OLD. |

The following was published in the March 24, 1988, edition of Tennis Week Magazine as a “Vantage Point” column and written by former Tennis Week founder and publisher Eugene L. Scott:

If your bent is not for chatty columns, flip the page; this one’s going to have the concentration span of a poorly groomed Cocker Spaniel. These days that’s the nature of the news in our sport with no orderly progressions to follow from stage to stage.

Ivan Lendl is uncharacteristically visible on the game’s agenda. Normally, Lendl goes about his business as the world’s No. 1 without frills. Suddenly there is a swirl of commotion centering on him that bears no relation to his performance on court. Which in itself is change enough. The only way Lendl used to get our attention was by his stainless steel finishes at the French and U.S. Opens.

In 1988, he has yet to win a tournament and is not likely to do so very soon having lost in the semifinals of the Australian Open to a pumped up Pat Cash and in the third round at Philadelphia to John Fitzgerald. Now he is injured with a stress fracture of the right foot which caused him to withdraw from the Lipton International this week and all other events for the next month and a half.

At the beginning of the year, Lendl determined to break away from ProServ, the management company in charge of his career, to start his own firm, Spectrum, located a 10-minute commute from his country manor in Greenwich, Conn. The problem I foresaw straight away was that Lendl would be bright enough to discover the business of tennis to be more challenging in many ways than playing tennis. And, no matter how hard he tried, his new endeavor would distract him and chip away at his practice time and the discipline required for his tour duties. Ultimately, his playing mission would be undermined. As Lendl himself is not afraid of pointing out, the reason he is No. 1 is not because of improvisational skills or a magical racquet hand, but rather because of conditioning and application. In other words, Lendl’s game is born of hard work rather than instinct which makes improbable, if not impossible, a Wimbledon victory fashioned from an effortless serve-and-volley scenario.

Compounding the distraction of injury and the start-up phase of his company, is the $7 million breach-of-contract suit brought against him by ProServ, which claims that Lendl just walked away from a binding management agreement. Lendl’s defense will be based on a provision stipulating that the contract could be terminated if Jerry Solomon ceased to be the person in charge of Lendl’s account. Last year, Solomon in fact, did assume new responsibilities as the new chief operating officer of ProServ, but whether in the process he constructively abandoned Lendl will be a threshold issue to litigate.

Classic buzzwords of a first-year contracts course will surface first with the question of whether Solomon’s functioning as C.O.O. did result in a “material breach.” Or did Lendl simply use Solomon’s new position as a canard to unbutton a perfectly legitimate contract? For what it’s worth, ProServ is not going to lose this dispute on a simple motion to dismiss the complaint. It won’t win on a motion for summary judgment either.

This almighty fact situation, which never is totally set forth in the parties’ pleadings, will finally decide this case, though Lendl must have some mighty incriminating evidence in defense for ProServ not to win some of that $7 million in lost fees — at least on the face of the papers already filed. Sooner or later, someone will ask whether Lendl notified ProServ of his worry that Solomon’s new assignment might mean less care and attention for Lendl. If so, was ProServ given a chance to correct the situation?

But a more fundamental question is why ProServ and Lendl couldn’t sort it out in private? Airing the dispute publicly hurts both Lendl and ProServ. Lendl, until a decision is reached one way or another, will be perceived by some fans as an athlete who can’t keep his commitments. ProServ’s image in the recruiting marketplace must be tarnished by suing the world’s No. 1 player and a former client.

Obviously both sides think they are right. And both reached their level of success by being right at least part of the time. A perfect setting for a compromise. Sound familiar? The hidden agenda is what the injury, new company and resulting lawsuit will do to Lendl’s artfully structured playing life which this column extolled several issues ago as a model for every professional athlete. Until he reduces the swelling from all three areas, this space predicts he won’t win another Grand Slam title.

For years, this writer reviewed the U.S. Tennis Association’s annual meeting as a seasonally scheduled clambake. My cuff was meant affectionately, but on the chance that someone’s feelings were hurt, the gathering will henceforth be characterized as a celebration instead. A celebration of the year’s work by the USTA’s 10,000 volunteers who were represented by over 500 committee members (and spouses) attending the week of meetings at the Bonaventure Resort and Spa in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Little of the organization’s work is actually accomplished at the meeting which instead serves as a giant review of the full breadth of Association activity – ranging from nationally ranking almost 3,000 juniors, seniors, adult and parent-child pairings to presiding over 2,300 certified umpires.

Inevitably, any inspection of the USTA focuses on figures, but not the increase-in-membership type which despite a healthy eight percent jump to 309,467, does not romance the stone. The numbers that loosen your tie and make your palm itch are the USTA’s 1987 total revenues of almost $40 million, with a kitty of over $37 million. I know the term kitty doesn’t have widespread acceptance among accountants, but, believe me, in this instance it’s not far off base. If the USTA were a business, the dough would be called retained earnings. The USTA calls it a Combined Fund Balance. The money is largely unrestricted. It’s a kitty.

The kitty’s primary benefactor is the U.S. Open which netted the Association about $19 million in 1987, triple what mighty Wimbledon makes. These facts and other pertinent USTA information were provided for the first time in a formal USTA annual report, a significant but unheralded accomplishment of the Gordon Jorgensen presidency, and long overdue.

The hot topic of the annual meeting was the report of the Special Committee on Player Development which was appointed last year to respond to the plunging fortunes of Americans at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and in Davis Cup. The Committee’s goal quickly ballooned to a master plan to enlarge the USTA player base and to provide new programs to allow all our best players to reach their full potential.

Two minor glitches in the Player Development Committee’s presentation were not widely reported but should be briefly observed for the record. During the week, Stan Smith was announced as the USTA’s director of coaching, the glitch being that Stan was on the selection committee. One extenuating circumstance was that the requirement for the director to live in Princeton, N.J., was about to be lifted for finalists Dennis Ralston and Tom Gullikson at which point someone observed that the Princeton proviso was a reason Smith had not thrown his hat into the ring in the first place. Considering that in the process of selecting one king of coaching, you are simultaneously rejecting a dozen other highly qualified pretenders to that throne, sensitivity was short-circuited.

None of this has anything to do with Smith’s ability to do the job. But even his credentials and image, which are impeccable, won’t help him if he doesn’t produce. Ralston and Gullikson, by the way, are frontrunners for selection as two of the four national coaches.

The other glitch, which may not go away as easily as the selection snafu, is the simmering tempest of U.S. team members being required to wear Adidas clothing. Naturally, other manufacturers, particularly Ellesse, which start supplying promising juniors with clothes in their early teens, are irate that their prior relationships are being fiddled by Adidas.

The amount of money the USTA receives for Adidas to be an official supplier is inconsequential to the overall team budget, so that can’t be used as a bona fide reason. And the rationale that the team must look the same is weak also. Manufacturers would accept that Adidas supply the ceremonial part of the uniform (blazer and warm-ups), but the shorts, shirt and dress are performance related and should be up to the athlete. But if bullying is the mode, go all the way. Force the team to use Adidas shoes, socks, racquets and string. And eat Adidas energy bars as well.

To conclude my annual meeting observations on an up-tic, it should be pointed out that the USTA inaugurated its volunteer service awards to those with more than 10, 25 and 50 years of service: 50 year pins went to James H. Van Alen, Mike Blanchard and Dave Freed. Finally, whether you agree with Jorgensen or First Vice President David Markin on the issues before the Association is immaterial, but in light of less than cozy relationships of past presidents and their successors, it was a continuing boost to spirits to witness Jorgensen and Markin actually enjoy each other’s company all week. And it’s a long week.

Topics: Eugene L. Scott, Tennis, Tennis News, Vantage Point

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10sBalls_com says:

September 4, 2014 at 3:03 pm

#VANTAGEPOINT BY EUGENE L. SCOTT. OUT OF THE ARCHIVES. A MUST READ. LOTS OF #USTA SAME OLD, SAME OLD.- http://t.co/e3lOEPeNJN #tennis

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