ISDA Tour Reorganizes, Seeks Sponsorship
By Rob Dinerman
Dateline Feb 15, 2006--- In a turn of events that will likely have
major ramifications for the present and future of North American
professional doubles, Gary Waite, the President of the International
Squash Doubles Association (ISDA), announced in a February 9th email to
the Board of Directors that the ISDA in its current organizational and
administrative form will be ceasing operations in order for its
leadership, consisting of himself and Executive Director James Hewitt,
to concentrate their efforts on securing significant corporate
sponsorship to reinvigorate a tour whose growth has reached a plateau
during the past 18 months after several prior years of consistent
expansion.
Waite's statement, coming as it does right in the midst of the
2005-2006 Tour cycle, will affect both an increasingly fractious player
group and the March through May tour sites (including planned events in
Vancouver, Long Island, Manhattan, San Francisco and St. Louis), though
Waite made it clear that he planned to contact those sites and offer to
assist in any way to ensure their success. He also expressed the hope
that by working with these venues in a more informal atmosphere, he and
Hewitt would be better able to learn more about what the tournament
directors would like to see and arrive at more creative ways to market
the game.
Waite's email to the Board referenced several additional aspects of the
new direction he envisages for the Association that he and Hewitt
formed in the late 1990's, such as a reconfiguration as a non-profit
organization and an attempt to involve sites below the $20,000 level
that at present constitutes the minimum for an event to be sanctioned
for ranking purposes. But clearly the most significant phenomenon
driving his and Hewitt's decision is the need to attract the type of
corporate backing that will elevate the tour beyond the state where it
is dependent on the beneficence of the current crop of private-club
patrons. The latter group, understandably after a half-dozen years of
financial support, has become visibly fatigued by the burden of
multiple fundraising efforts, especially in the New York metropolitan
area, where four or five pro doubles events now take place every year.
The current situation has been building for some time and seemed to
have been affected at least in part by an unhappy player reaction that
resulted this past week when the number of main-draw teams in an
upcoming event was reduced at the host club's request from 16 to 12
after the draw had already been disseminated as a 16. Especially
starting with the early-season events this past fall, the ISDA's effort
to grow has hit something of a plateau, as has the good-will of its
players (very few of whom had any hesitation about playing in several
autumn '05 sites that ignored the ISDA, did their own player
invitations and even matched up playing partners), resulting in a loss
of leverage with the sites, many of whom were feeling the effects of
the considerable expenditures of time and money that running an ISDA
tournament exacts.
The fact that Waite himself, along with playing partner Damien Mudge,
have been such a dominant team throughout the ISDA's existence,
including going undefeated wire-to-wire last season before finally
stumbling a few times this season, has itself become somewhat
problematic by giving an unwanted preordained feel to the competitive
scenario. Even when Mark Talbott was enjoying such similar success on
the WPSA hardball singles tour that had such a remarkable run in the
1980's and early 1990's, he was often winning by narrow enough margins
to make most WPSA tourneys have much more of an anyone-can-win feel to
them than has been the case with the ISDA.
The ISDA may simply be going through the kind of difficult but
ultimately productive growing pains that frequently attend the
successful launching of a professional sports association once harsh
marketing and environmental realities make their presence felt after
the initial rush of adrenaline that fueled the first few years has worn
off. Waite's statement, far from raising a white flag, was rather a
purposeful declaration of a need for a brief retrenchment preceding a
forceful and targeted redirection of the Association's manpower, with
an eye towards creating the strongest and most successful North
American doubles organization that has ever existed.
There is no question that the exposure and quality of the ISDA tour has
immensely enhanced amateur and club doubles activity (the recent spate
of new doubles court construction, notwithstanding the large expense of
doing so, providing tangible proof of the foregoing) and Waite's report
to the ISDA Board last week emphatically reflected his determination to
further the sport's growth at all levels, even as he signaled what
amounts to a time-out to give himself and his colleague a chance to
prepare themselves to undertake the formidable task that lies ahead of
them.