Buy low, sell
high. It’s the first, and maybe most important, rule of finance. And it would
seem the new owners of The Racquet Club of Memphis — and with it this week’s
twin events, the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships and the Cellular South Cup
— took the rule to heart. As ambitious as the new ownership — California-based
Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment and their local partners, Golden Set
Holdings (led by ad execs Doug Carpenter and Brian Sullivan) — may be, they
clearly have taken on a once-proud event clinging to the fringe of interest
beyond the loyal members of The Racquet Club and the local tennis community. In
the same venue that has seen no fewer than nine men ranked year-end number-one
in the world raise a championship trophy, this week’s RMKC will boast only two
players in the world’s top 10: Andy Roddick (#6) and Juan Martin del Potro (#7).
The decline in Q
rating for the Memphis tournament – first played in 1977, when Bjorn Borg was
crowned champion — is hardly for a lack of effort, particularly on the part of
the club’s previous owner, Mac Winker. The tournament has raised millions of
dollars for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and included St. Jude in its
title for 12 years (1993-2004). Just this year, the event gained status as one
of ten “500-level” tournaments. (Top-ranked players are required to play in
roughly half the 500-level events on the calendar.) Even better, presumably, in
the eyes of the best players in the world, prize money in Memphis has increased
more than 50 percent this year, to $1.1 million.
So where are the
big boys? The greatest player of this generation, Switzerland’s Roger Federer,
has yet to make his Memphis debut. The same goes for Spain’s Rafael Nadal, the
current top-ranked player in the world. Perhaps their glaring absence over the
years has more to do with geography than the declining status of our local
tournament. (Crossing the Atlantic for Memphis in February has been a tough
pitch for travel agents since before Federer and Nadal were born.) As the upper
tier of the world’s tennis rankings grows more and more international (Serbia’s
Novak Djokovic, England’s Andy Murray, and Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko round out
the top five), the more challenging it becomes for the RMKC leadership to put
the very best under the reflective light of The Racquet Club’s center court.
Which brings us
back to this year’s event, where the tournament’s marketing campaign was
centered around Pete Sampras, the winner of more Grand Slam events (14) than any
player in history . . . and a player retired from the ATP Tour for over six
years now. When an exhibition match becomes the centerpiece for a week of
tennis, reflection is in order. (It should be noted Sampras’ exhibition match
with Lleyton Hewitt will raise money for St. Jude. The tournament’s heart is in
the right place.)
It’s not quite a
rule of finance, though maybe it should be: sex sells. And no sport, over the
generations, has been sexier at its heights than tennis. Whether it’s Jimmy
Connors grabbing his crotch between Wimbledon titles or Andre Agassi managing to
make fans swoon first with locks below his shoulder blades then completely bald,
the sport has demanded personality from its champions in ways that golf and
motor sports, for instance, do not. (Three-time NASCAR champ Jimmie Johnson
sells hammers and nails for Lowe’s, but you won’t see him hosting Saturday Night
Live anytime soon.) The sexy rule has been especially prevalent on the women’s
side. For evidence, just pick up a copy of this year’s Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue. You’ll see three WTA pros (no Grand Slam title among them), each
wearing much less than a tennis skirt. Even a first-round exit by Russian beauty
Maria Sharapova — on the sidelines these days with an injury — would do more for
the Cellular South Cup than favorites Caroline Wozniacki or Victoria Azarenka
could with a title run. Alas, there will be nary a top-10 women’s player at The
Racquet Club this week.
Tennis remains a
gorgeous sport, sexy or otherwise. And the RMKC is merely symptomatic in a
nationwide malaise when it comes to the game at its highest level. When last
month’s Australian Open announced its seeds, there were exactly three American
men among the 32 highest-ranked players. Over the last 33 Grand Slam events,
American men have won but four (and only one of those by a currently active
player, Roddick). Perhaps American tennis needs its own Tiger Woods. Black or
white, a transcendent star who will make the golf and NASCAR sets turn their
attention back to tennis, even in mid-February.
Here’s hoping he
comes along in time to save the Memphis tournament.
