Tennis Gets Reset

By Kristina Dell

Just five months into his job as president of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), Etienne de Villiers faced a hostile crowd of doubles pros at the Masters Cup in Shanghai to explain to them why he would have to curtail their sport to save it. The players had already filed suit against the ATP, and there was De Villiers last November, back swinging just four months after cancer surgery, telling them he was going to go ahead with a shortened, no-ad scoring system; a super tie-break instead of a third set; and a rule that doubles players must qualify for singles, thus making it harder for doubles specialists to get into doubles draws. The outraged pros viewed the move as a cost-saving effort to kill that form of the sport--one that out-of-shape executives love to play but rarely pay to watch.

A year later, doubles, which had been losing money for the past 15 years, is thriving using most of those new rules. The ATP signed its first doubles-only sponsor, Stanford Financial Group, and the players have dropped their suit. Through frank talks and fulfilled promises of more doubles promotion and center-court matches--made possible by shortening the format and attracting more top singles players to doubles--the former Walt Disney exec has turned some of his harshest critics into his biggest fans.

Resolving the troubles in doubles is the most visible example of how the straight-shooting South African is reinventing this most conservative sport. Bob Bryan, one of the pros who initiated the lawsuit along with his twin brother Mike--they're the top doubles team in the world--now lobs compliments via e-mail: "He's a cool guy who doesn't need this gig. He just wants to help tennis and the tour."

The structure of the men's professional tour practically begs for a brawl, with lots of competing interests steeped in tradition and little incentive to work together. Unlike many professional sports leagues, which are made up of a collection of more-or-less cooperative clubs, De Villiers represents a coterie of competing constituents. The ATP oversees the maze of tournaments around the globe and is co-owned by the tournament directors and the players, groups whose interests often clash.

The pros are free agents, choosing to play the events they like, while each tournament director scrambles to woo top names. De Villiers is the referee, trying to strengthen tennis while balancing the needs of tournament directors and players. To complicate matters, national or local tennis federations govern the Grand Slams--the Australian, French and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon, the sport's biggest events--and the International Tennis Federation oversees Davis Cup matches between countries. The result is a scheduling nightmare in which even the smallest changes become political.

But De Villiers, 57, may be the perfect candidate to turn tennis around because he has nothing to prove. He's rich and secure. At Disney for 14 years, he most recently ran its international TV business, then he moved on to a private-equity fund. "I've had a great career, and I don't care if I lose my job," says De Villiers, whose cancer is in remission. "So I'm prepared to do the right thing and go to the edge to get there."

He is planning to revamp the sport from day one--starting tourneys on Sundays instead of Mondays to gain more weekend fans. Those four-hour, five-set matches? Gone by 2008, except at the Slams, replaced by best-of-three matches, to reduce player injuries and increase fan interest. The most radical alteration is a round-robin format at smaller tournaments until the final rounds, which would revert to the traditional knockout. That setup would give spectators more opportunities to see marquee players. But the draws would be smaller to accommodate more matches, so fewer low-ranked players could compete. "As much as fans will never come to watch me give a trophy in a beautiful blue suit, they won't show up to watch the 156th guy play," says De Villiers.

The Disney man took over an organization that inked a $1.2 billion TV and marketing deal in 1999 with Swiss company ISL, only to watch that outfit go belly up two years later. To weather the loss, the ATP cut staff, eliminated player bonuses and pushed for more sponsorship dollars. Worse, the sport's U.S. television viewership leveled off; it's nowhere close to golf's.

The ATP's total prize money has remained stagnant for the past two years even as the Grand Slams continue to increase payouts. The tour's 64 events have an estimated total purse of about $60 million for 2006, which is about 8% lower than five years ago. De Villiers is raising the prize money 10% at tour events in 2007--the first significant hike in years.

De Villiers intends to drum up interest by promoting plotlines and player drama--reality TV for the country-club set. "We have the most phenomenal characters of any sport, but we're not doing a good enough job telling the story," he says, his entertainment background evident. (His staff even calls him E.T.) To pitch tennis to the public, De Villiers hired marketing ace Phil Anderton, a veteran of Coca-Cola and the Scottish Rugby League, where he garnered the nickname "Fireworks Phil" for the countless fan-friendly ideas he brought to the sport (yes, including fireworks).

Anderton oversees the ATP's new global-marketing fund, which will increase from $500,000 this year to $5 million next year and reach $10 million by 2009. To pay for it, De Villiers tapped sponsors and taxed tournament directors, insisting that better marketing creates money across the board. "He realizes that tennis is about show business," says Perry Rogers, an ATP board member and president of Agassi Enterprises.

He also thrives on confrontation, which can rub tennis vets the wrong way. "I'm not sure if he knows the difference between a forehand and a backhand," says a tennis insider who requested anonymity. That wouldn't bother De Villiers--and it doesn't matter. Tennis doesn't need a tennis expert; it needs someone who can execute a business plan. It's your serve, Etienne.