Things are going to be pretty hectic around here in early and mid-July, so I'm going to post a few thoughts on an issue of critical importance to tennis that will come to a head in a courtroom starting on July 21. That's when representatives of the Hamburg Masters Series event will get their day in court, in with a full front assault on the the ATP's right to strip them of Masters status - and move their tournament dates to the post Wimbledon period of European clay-court play.
The towering issue here is the ATP's right - or lack thereof - to adjust its calendar and events in order to change the game, something that the ATP presumably does to provide a better, more coherent, fan and player friendly schedule. To put it more starkly, the ATP has wanted to usher Hamburg out of the Masters line-up, and thereby also make room for a combined clay-court event in Madrid. Promoter Ion Tiriac has put together a potential Madrid package so appealing that it would immediately leap-frog into the sub-Grand Slam category of events alongside Indian Wells and Miami. Should Hamburg win its anti-trust case, the repercussions could be nasty, because it's impossible to envision that Tiriac and Madrid will just go away. The Madrid plan has already been green-lighted by the WTA, with CEO Larry Scott having cleared all the hurdles that might have stood in the way.
Say what you will about Scott; he's an expert at covering all his bases and proceeding with one eye on his back.
And this, folks, is where it gets tricky. And this is where the Hamburg decision may go down as a make-it or break-it moment for the ATP - most particularly, for the move to oust Hamburg, ATP CEO Etienne de Villiers. I talked with numerous tennis insiders at the French Open about this case, and the general feeling is that the case is viewed within the game as a test of de Villiers' leadership and his ability to govern. This is not very good news for de Villiers, because almost everyone I spoke with felt that the ATP's chance of winning this case is slim - one insider pegged it at "about ten per cent."
Oddly enough, all this might not have had to happen. One of my trusted sources told me that Hamburg at one point was willing to sell its promotional rights to Tiriac outright, but that the ATP blocked the move. Why should Tiriac benefit from an enormous windfall ($15 million was the figure I heard) in addition to winning a coveted slot on the calendar for Madrid? Eventually, Hamburg withdrew the offer and dug in its heels. It's gotten to the point where it's all about the lawyers; offers to help negotiate a settlement behind closed doors have been rebuffed. Hamburg appears to want - and relish - it's day in court.
Some of the insiders - all of them are men and women who work in the financial and organizational trenches of the game - believe that de Villier's cardinal error is that he doesn't appear to have a Plan B, never mind a Plan C. So if Hamburg wins its case, a lot of people might find themselves looking at Tiriac, de Villiers, Scott and others, asking, "Now what?" The ATP's seeming confidence, if this is an accurate representation of the situation (and if "confidence" is the right word), can only be rooted in one of two options (or both): confidence that that ATP will prevail and show that it has the right to pursue the same (arguably) monopolistic practices as most pro sports organization are accused of following, or a conviction within the ATP - or, de Villier's office - that Hamburg is more or less bluffing, trying to jack up the price the ATP and its allies might be willing to pay in order to make the case go away - and get the calendar they want. In this scenario, the parties reach a "courthouse steps" settlement.
One thing that should not be discounted here is human and institutional pride. From Hamburg's point of view, the ATP is running roughshod over a historically significant event (Hamburg is, after all, the German Open, which means that it theoretically has the same gravitas as the Italian, French, U.S. or British (Wimbledon) Opens. On paper, the event has more institutional legitimacy than either Monte Carlo or Barcelona, if not Rome.
Thus, removing Hamburg from the French Open Series line-up without due cause (say, gross mismanagement, or a failure to live up to the terms of its sanction as an ATP event) can be viewed as a capricious and deeply unfair move taken simply because the ATP sees a better "deal" on the horizon in Madrid. It's legitimate to ask, why not demote Rome instead and move everything up by one week? Or give the Rome week to Madrid? One thing seems painfully obvious to me: the ATP should never have let it come to this. Unless you believe the ATP can and should throw its partners under the bus in order to (ostensibly) improve the game, it's hard to see how this action can be described as fair. Sensible? Perhaps. Welcome? Maybe. Economically attractive? Ja!
But fair? No.
What I don't really understand, and hope to find out in the coming days, is just what happens if Hamburg wins - and the scuttlebutt is that Hamburg will win. Does that mean Hamburg - or any other tournament, is perpetually grandfathered into the calendar so long as it meets its contractual agreement with the ATP? Can minor stakeholders (for every tournament is in some ways just that) in the ATP tour block the organization from altering its own calendar and seeking "the good of the game"?
And where does all this leave Madrid, a project so massive, with support from so many segments of the overall community, that the French Open itself is said to be casting nervous glances over its shoulder, fearful that Madrid will eventually eclipse it - bringing to fruition Tiriac's stated desire to create a de facto Grand Slam event. The Grand Slam Committee can't exactly love that idea, since the unofficial position there is that the pre-eminence of the four current majors must be maintained. Some of the powerful constituents in this era of shifting power bases would welcome the ATP winning. But to say that this isolated action against Hamburg is somehow tied in with a massive restructuring is a reach. Nobody is going to blow up anything and start over, which makes it that much harder to defend the Hamburg intervention on the grounds that it's good for a game badly in need of fundamental change.
Of course, these same issues (overcrowded calendar, player fatigue, equitable distribution of power among the stakeholders) were asked when the the ATP originally broke with the Pro Council (via the "Parking Lot Press Conference" of 1988) and nominally took a much greater leadership role in the game. The palace revolt was intended to empower the players, increasing their involvement in, and responsibility for, the quality and integrity of the game. It rested on the idea that the ideal way to move tennis forward was through a partnership between players and the tournament promoters, theoretically cutting out or greatly diminishing the role of other stakeholders (like the ITF). Only it was impossible to cut those de facto partners out effectively, partly because they already owned some of the the great franchises in the game (the Grand Slams).
The truth is that the "new" organism that emerged very quickly began to look no different from the organism it had destroyed, and the way the promoters and players now share power hasn't led to many changes at all. The only action I can see breaking this deadlock is a reinvigorated player union that is not in cahoots with the tournaments, but willing and ready to use its leverage (control of and solidarity among the players) against the tournaments. Or look at it this way, as long as Hamburg is a sanctioned ATP event, it implicitly has the stamp of the players' approval. A player boycott of Hamburg tomorrow would be in effect a self-boycott, because of the intrinsic partnership of the ATP and the tournaments.
An independent player's union, with none of the conflicts inherent in a partnership with tournament promoters, could potentially transform the tennis landscape - and calendar. But such a union is unlikely to emerge unless the ATP itself goes under - or a leadership class of players imposes its will and ambitions on the organization. Perhaps a player's union ought to be one component of the ATP, and if that were to happen it would be a return to a structure nearly identical to the one the ATP rejected in 1988.