Tennis, Golf Begin 2012 Campaigns

Men's pro tennis and golf start new seasons in the wake of leadership announcements, and the women's tours look robust

By Rick Horrow and Karla Swatek

From Iowa to New Hampshire and on to South Carolina next week, America’s GOP Presidential hopefuls have been volleying ferociously back and forth to see which of them will outlast the others to become the Republican Presidential nominee.

On the courts and courses with which many of these candidates are familiar, tandem quests for leadership roles have been more subtly carried out, as both men’s pro tennis and golf have made major leadership announcements in the past few weeks, and the heads of women’s tennis and golf are likewise making headlines.

As tennis prepares to convene its first Grand Slam event of the year, the Australian Open in Melbourne, the PGA Tour looks forward to its return to the mainland U.S. next week with an event in the Southern California desert reinvigorated by a former U.S. President.

Our country’s club sports begin anew.

Wary Love Down Under

At Melbourne Park, the 128 entrants, respectively, in the men’s and women’s singles brackets look forward to vying for the tourney’s top prize—a $2.3 million winner’s purse, a new record for Slam prize monies. Things are more status quo on the sponsor’s side, with Kia Motors, Jacob’s Creek wines, Rolex, ANZ, IBM, and Virgin Australia returning for yet another summer’s turn around the hard courts.

Also broadcasting positive news in the weeks leading up to the event is Fila, which earlier this week announced it has signed world No. 7 Vera Zvonareva, previously under contract with K-Swiss, and former world No. 1 Jelena Jankovic, now No. 14, formerly with Anta Sports. Fila will clothe both leading ladies at the Open, which is always tennis’s first major fashion show of the year in addition to being a mega sporting event.

Tennis Channel has also been on the receiving end of some good news. In late December, a Federal Communications Commission judge ruled in favor of the specialty sports channel in its long-standing program carriage complaint against Comcast. The ruling, as Broadcasting & Cable notes, “marks the first time a network has prevailed in a program carriage complaint against a cable operator, and it should mean a big boost in the number of cable [subscribers who] can get the channel.”

Comcast is now required to pay Tennis Channel $375,000 and is prohibited from discriminating against Tennis Channel by way of NBC Sports Network or Golf Channel, both affiliated with Comcast’s NBC Universal and both similar sports channels targeting similar audiences. The decision is still subject to review by the full FCC commission. “We’re preparing to add between 20 million and 23 million households,” Tennis Channel Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ken Solomon told the New York Times.

After a six-month search, the ATP’s hunt for a new leader also concluded in the last week of 2011, with the announcement that 53-year-old Australian tennis executive Brad Drewett would replace Adam Helfant as ATP executive chairman and president, after Helfant announced in May that he would not pursue a new deal with the association after they failed to come to terms on a new contract.

The powerful ATP Players Council, led by tennis’s Big Three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic, was at first reluctant to get behind a tennis insider like Drewett, many players instead preferring former Wimbledon champion Richard Krajicek, who, as a former top-10 player, might better represent their interests (including shortening the ridiculously long pro tennis calendar). But after Federer threw his support behind Drewett, the tournament director of the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals got the job.

“He understands the global nature of the business as well as the complexities of dealing with all of the tour’s stakeholders,” Federer said of Drewett.