The loss of Larry Scott, the man whose persuasive talents brought about equal prize money at the four grand slam tournaments and a raft of other astonishing improvements in women's tennis, to something called the NCAA PAC-10, is something that tennis is going to take a while to recover from. Arguably its most progressive leader has packed his bags and gone back to college.
There is nothing, one supposes, like leaving on a high and that is certainly true of Scott, the chief executive of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour for the past six years, before which it was just the good old WTA, without a sponsor that would transform its global reach and indulge its wildest imaginations. He will surely do for college sports, as its new commissioner with so much influence across the American psyche, what he did for a sport that has become a market leader in the world of sport.
The list of his achievements are quite remarkable but I think it was one his staff members, who had worked for the association before and returned to it just recently, who hit the nail on the head when she said last week "Everything is just so much more professional these days. Everyone knows what they have to do and everyone gets on with doing their own job properly."
It is a week of sea changes for women's tennis. As the Net Post revealed three weeks ago, Kim Clijsters, the former world No 1 from Belgium, is about to announce her return to the tour after a spell of "retirement" during which time she became a mother for the first time and, having consulted Lindsay Davenport on what it is like to share the chores of dirty nappies and diving for volleys, is eager to hit balls competitively again. We cannot wait to see Kim back to her former glory and she has already asked the US Open, where she won her only gramd slam title in 2005 (she was twice a runner-up in the French Open and once in Australia), for a wild card which they will decide upon when they see how rapidly she finds her former flow.
Scott would like to have stuck around to see how that develops but, effective July 1, he will be taking his front row seats in the NCAA where "March Madness", the college basketball championships whose interests in the United States is easily on a par with Barclays Premier League football in England, are about to reach their final crescendo.
In tennis, Scott has been rightly credited with engineering a remarkable turnaround for the professional game, one which is in a stronger position today than ever before. Among his milestone achievements are: the passage of the Tour’s Roadmap plan, the most sweeping reforms to the calendar in history; equal prize money at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, with the top ten events in women’s tennis now featuring equal pay; signing of the largest sponsorship deal in the history of women’s sport and professional tennis with Sony Ericsson at $88 million over six years; signing of the largest television deal in the history of the Tour with Eurosport; signing of the largest year-end Tour championships deals in Tour history, with the event hosted by Doha, Qatar from 2008-2010 following a successful two-year stint in Madrid, and by Istanbul, Turkey from 2011-2013 at a total value of $84 million; significant global expansion of the sport into new markets, including establishment of the Tour’s first ever Asia-Pacific headquarters in Beijing; the establishment of the Tour on its strongest financial footing, including a 500 per cent increase in sponsorship revenues and a two-and-a-half times increase in overall revenues, a 40 per cent increase in prize money and $710 million in new stadium investments.
Anyone with those on their CV should rightly walk into most top sporting jobs. And so, a few weeks after Adam Helfant began his tenure as the new CEO and chairman of the ATP World Tour, the women are looking for someone new in the hot seat. It goes without saying that they have a thoroughly difficult act to follow.
His one comment yesterday was: “With women’s professional tennis more popular than ever, the Tour in the strongest business position in its history and a fantastic senior management team in place, now is the right time for me to embrace a new challenge consistent with my family and personal goals, and leave room for the next generation of Tour leadership to take on new responsibilities."
(Source: Timesonline.co.uk)
