An Open Letter. . .

[[ The other day, I mentioned that Kris Dent, the ATP's Director of Corporate Communications, agreed to write an "Open Letter" to *TennisWorld readers, to provide the ATP's institutional view of the progress that has been made recently in the sport, and to highlight some of the programs and advances of which the ATP is most proud.

I felt his would be a good thing to do in light of the fairly narrow focus I adopted in some of my recent pieces on the ATP, and specifically on the degree of latitude (or lack thereof) available to any potential ATP CEO. One valuable aspect of dragging Kris into this, I felt, was to highlight the fact that the executive actions of the CEO, especially in the most high profile areas (like the Hamburg demotion crisis, or the round-robin experiment) are only part of the ATP's overall effort to administer the pro game. So here's a broader overview of recent ATP activities and some of the up sides of the way the ATP is structured as a partnership between the players and tournaments.]]*

Kris writes:

Peter - thanks again for your time this morning - always good to catch up and discuss and debate the issues. And thank you for making the changes to the original  article on the point about staff.

As I said I certainly wouldn't argue that tennis's structure can often make it a challenge to move the sport forward, but I'm not convinced it has lead to a 'perpetual state of gridlock'.

Indeed many of the positive changes that have been made to the men's game in recent times have come about because both the tournaments and players have been represented at the ATP Board table, and they have been able to find ways of moving the sport forward to the benefit of all in the men's game.

Innovations like Hawkeye and the changes to Doubles scoring, for instance, have been introduced successfully and have become huge fan favourites. Similarly, having both groups represented at Board level has allowed the calendar changes for next year to be made - positives such as creating a
healthier schedule for players to plan their season from, the creation of a new, dedicated Asian swing post-US Open, and the less congested spring clay and autumn indoor seasons are good examples. The increases in investment into new stadia ($800m worth) and the record prize money levels on offer next year only came about because both tournament and player representatives worked at a Council and Board level to create them, together.

Having the people that matter in the room together when decisions are being made and changes debated can be a great positive for our sport. No one would argue that having Rafa, Roger and Novak on the Player Council, involved in the process of governance, is anything but a huge positive for the sport and the same is true on the tournament side.

There are also positive examples in recent times of tennis as a wider industry working together to make needed change, quickly. The sport's reaction to the issue of integrity this year is, I think, an example of how we have worked together, quickly and transparently to the benefit of tennis. In less than a year, the governing bodies have taken decisive action to tackle the issue - they commissioned and published in full an independent report into integrity by Ben Gunn and Jeff Rees, accepted and implemented all 15 recommendations of that report, created a standard set of integrity rules across the sport globally and have introduced an independent, global tennis Integrity Unit which now has responsibility for this area.

Tennis is a truly global sport that has always had many stakeholders within it, and of course that means that one part of a tennis leader's role is to find common ground. But it is also a sport that is happy to acommodate visionaries, and having the key stakeholders in the Board room together means you can achieve a great deal together.

I guess that whoever becomes the next Chairman of the ATP will go a long way to proving or disproving your argument - but I would be very surprised if he (or she) turned out to be just a dotter of i's or crosser of t's.

Once again thanks for your time today. I will speak with Phil as soon as he is back in the UK and hopefully we can arrange the Q&A with fans for next week or early in January.

Cheers
Kris

[[ *One of the main things I take away from these comments is that there's a big difference between a significantly reduced calendar and a better-structured one. That is, the players probably are reconciled to the loaded calendar, and agree that the solution to their discontents lies not in cutting back the calendar, but in structuring it in a more sensible way. And I'm glad Kris mentioned the rapid action on the integrity front. One thing Kris did not mention is that the tennis is way out in front of many sports on the doping issue; I think that's probably because that is more of an ITF/Olympics issue than an ATP issue. But it's a fact.
*

Whatever the reason, tennis today is one of the most rigorously "clean" among all sports. Interestingly, a powerful, independent player's union might have created serious obstacles to the implementation of strong, transparent integrity policies and perhaps even doping positions, given the way that player unions often try to protect their constituents and preserve their autonomy and what might loosely be called their "rights." But that's an issue for another time.]]

-- Pete