The Smurf-Open Disaster

Today I'd like to share with you a really great post a guy named "Mr Rick" posted on Steve Tognor's blog on 05/13 about the nightmare week in Madrid that ended on Sunday (finally! Tought it will last forever, haha):
 
The Madrid tournament "blue" it (I would rate it as an "acceptable" pun...)

Firstly, it was both the city of Madrid and tournament organizers who "blue" it, which they FINALLY acknowledged today. The Magic Box is proving to be a rather ill-conceived idea all the way around, a somewhat overblown attempt by Spain to win the Olympic Games, as well as try to turn the Madrid Masters into a 5th grand slam event. To make things worse, they brought in an egomaniacal Hungarian to develop the tournament who doesn't give a rat’s @## about Spanish players or Spanish tennis traditions.

I would like to see what would happen if Ion Tiriac went over to Toronto and tried to start turning the hockey ice and the pucks different colors and textures so that the fans could "see" things a little better. Messing with ice hockey in Canada? I don't think things would turn out well for the Blue Lord. He would be lucky to get out of Canada alive. I am sure Spain rues the day it ever let Tiriac in the country, let alone take over their most prized tennis arena.

Sport would be nothing without tradition. It's a simple fact that the Evil Blue Lord and the other Madrid organizers fail to grasp. They would have been far more successful with the fans and the players in Madrid if they had built a facility and created a tournament that embraced the incredibly rich Spanish and European tennis traditions and history, rather than make it all about some billionaire's fantasy.

The other (probably more important)issue simmering under the Madrid Boycott is about the ATP and how the blue clay got to Madrid in the first place. It is pretty much the last straw in the ATP's habitual disregard of tennis players concerns. The ATP was originally supposed to represent the players, but it now has just become the servant of the TV stations, the promoters, and other interests who just want to make money from tennis.

This leaves the players without a dignified platform where their concerns can be seriously and fairly addressed. There is a growing frustration and realization among the players that they indeed have no control over the conditions under which they play.

The only choice the players have is to resort to the humiliation of begging the ATP for change. When they are summarily rejected, the players are then left with only two other humiliating options - complaining to the press and/or boycotting important tournaments where they want to play.

The players are then labeled as whiners and wusses and unprofessional.

Even though, in the case of Madrid, Rafa and other players raised the issue of the blue clay WELL in advance of the tournament, the tournament organizers and the ATP failed to provide a safe playing surface anyway, and then lied to the players that the court surface would be okay.

The main concern of labor unions is safety and working conditions. If left to their own devices, working conditions are usually an owner's last concern. So it should be no surprise that the concerns of tennis players are the same and it should be no surprise that frustration is arising with the ATP over these same issues. In other team sports when a player gets injured, they can be replaced by another player. Obviously in tennis, that is not the case, which is why Rafa and Nole were so concerned about playing conditions and getting injured in Madrid.

Anyway, you could tell exactly how bad things were when Tiriac started a fight this week over which courts were LESS dangerous, Monte Carlo or Madrid. New Madrid motto: You will break your legs less often here!

There also seems to be the attitude, expressed on these boards and by the ATP and owners, that the players are mere employees - or worse mercenaries for hire - the ATP writes the pay checks and therefore the players should not complain to their masters. More humiliation and frustration - because it is the PLAYERS who are everyone's meal ticket.

The players undoubtedly sense that there will be more Ion Tiriacs in their future over whom they will again have no say. They rightly fear the direction their sport may take at the hands of these egomaniacs - a grand slam every month, "turbo tennis" played on flaming roller skates, being pushed more and more into humiliating and/or new, untested and unsafe playing conditions. These are probably exaggurations to some extent, but really, the weird possibilities are endless... When the tradition is taken out of a sport, often no one takes it seriously anymore. In fact, I would say the most important thing tennis has going for it IS tradition. If you want to have turbo tennis, make it a separate sport. But innovation just for innovation's sake is pretty worthless.

Until the ATP provides a more equitable platform for the players to address their concerns, the players will continue to feel humiliated and frustrated. There will be more disputes and more boycotts. And everyone will lose.