December 3,
2003-As
if the ISDA doubles tour has not been plagued by enough adversity this
fall, during which there have been two cancellations (in Vancouver and
Philadelphia, both of which are established sites) in the first four
ranking tournaments of the 2003-2004 schedule, Executive Director James
Hewitt sent an email to all tour members yesterday morning in which he
enclosed a copy of a letter of complaint about player conduct written
to ISDA President Gary Waite last spring by Samuel F. Abernethy, the
Chairman of the Racquets, Tennis & Squash Committee of the Racquet
& Tennis Club in New York, which is by any measure one of the most
influential clubs currently supporting the ISDA tour.
In the accompanying statement Hewitt appended to the copy, he advised
the membership that this letter "was only one example of some of the
complaints that the ISDA has been receiving with respect to the poor
behavior on and off court of some ISDA players" and asserted that going
forward the ISDA would be "more diligent about issuing fines and
suspensions to those players who do not abide by the ISDA code of
conduct as a means of ensuring the professionalism at ISDA events."
Mr. Abernethy focused the bulk of his comments on the final round of
last spring's Kellner Cup, which is arguably the most coveted title of
the entire season due to its substantial purse ($80,000), its
late-April time slot as a kind of climactic moment of the lengthy
season, its continuous presence throughout the first four years of the
ISDA's short but incandescent existence and its mid-town Manhattan
location at the University (quarter-finals), Union (semis) and Racquet
& Tennis (final) Clubs.
The 2003 final was particularly well played, exciting, competitive and
intense, with three-time defending champions and perennial No. 1 Waite
and Damien Mudge winning the second game by one point (on a daring
Mudge serve-return winner) to go up two games to love, only to then
lose the third and fourth games to their most serious rival (and
authors of their lone previous 2002-2003 defeat) Blair Horler and Clive
Leach, who then went up 14-10 in the fifth.
Mudge and Waite saved three consecutive match-points against them to
climb back to 13-14 before a Horler backhand-reverse volley winner gave
him and his partner
by far the most important and dramatic victory and title of their careers.
The play was extremely physical, especially during the latter
tension-filled laps of this nearly two-hour classic, as befits a match
of this magnitude played, as this one was, as part of a growing rivalry
between two teams whose members are particularly motivated for reasons
professional, financial and personal to defeat each other.
Understandably in view of the foregoing, the repartee with referee
Larry Sconzo, who had to make a number of close and (given the
tightness of the score) important calls, was correspondingly forceful
and spirited. But in the view of almost all of the ISDA players who
were present that night, nothing that happened either during the points
or between them exceeded the bounds of acceptable conduct; indeed, the
passion and desire demonstrated by all four ISDA stars doing battle
actually added to rather than detracted from the evening's charged
atmosphere and constituted a celebration of the professional strides
this still very young organization has already taken.
CULTURE CLASH
The thrust and gist of Mr. Abernethy's eloquent letter, whose genesis
lay not only in his own observations from his front-row gallery perch
that night but also from three separate letters the Committee he chairs
subsequently received from influential club members criticizing the way
the players acted, was significantly contrary to this latter view, a
dissonance which itself points up a growing and troublesome phenomenon
that has begun to present itself during the ISDA tour's evolution. As
Mr. Abernethy explicitly noted in the closing passage of his two-page
letter, clubs like Racquet & Tennis provide a considerable portion
of the prize money for the ISDA tour, and the potential disaffection of
these member/patrons who essentially underwrite the purses for these
events would consequently have destructive consequences for the tour's
vitality and for the ability of its performers to reap the financial
rewards of their praiseworthy skills and athleticism.
To a degree that for the most part exceeds that of the WPSA hardball
and PSA softball tours, the ISDA tour plays almost entirely in
exclusive and prestigious private clubs, since those are the only type
that possess doubles courts. A kind of culture clash appears to have
arisen between the genteel, sportsmanship-oriented aura that pervades
this kind of institution and the aggressive on- (and occasionally off-)
court personalities that to a noteworthy degree characterize the
sport's most successful practitioners. Mr. Abernethy himself hit upon
this emerging mismatch when he decried the "glaring demeanor and
outright criticism of the referee" and asserted that the player
comportment during the final "significantly detracts from our enjoyment
of the game and is entirely at odds with the values and culture of our
clubs and those of other clubs supporting the game."
While the top players definitely need the support of these clubs'
membership in order for a pro doubles tour of any substance to exist,
they are having an understandably difficult time re-calibrating (which
for the most part entails consciously toning down, perhaps to the
detriment of their won-loss records, a reduction most players will not
abide) the approach that has heretofore served them so well to meet the
expectations (indeed, requirements) of a patron group on whose goodwill
their viability depends. The collision between these two life forces
appears to have left both sides smarting a bit, a situation Mr.
Abernethy's letter brought into sharp relief, and it will be
interesting to see if Hewitt and the player group that he and ISDA
President Waite head can reach a successful resolution to this
potentially nettlesome issue and regain the momentum that the ISDA tour
enjoyed throughout the first few years of the 21st century prior to
encountering the various difficulties that have arisen in recent months.
This first appeared on squashtalk.com