Professionalizing the U.S. Pro

Rod Laver, considered by some the greatest player of all time, won the U.S. Pro Tennis Championship five times in the 1960s. In the 1970s, Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors each traveled to Longwood and returned with the title. Players as strong as John McEnroe never won the crown.

And this year? The top seed will be Jose Luis Clerc. You never heard of him? A relative unknown, despite his ninth-place world ranking. Clerc's obscurity symbolizes the problems haunting the only world-class tennis tournament that can be reached on the Green Line. Last year he beat one James Scott Connors, whom the tournament committee had paid in the neighborhood of $50,000 just to show up and help sell tickets. With Connors out of the lineup early, sales slumped and the tournament ended up just breaking even. Which, considering the huge amounts of money it had lost in preceding years, was viewed as something of a triumph.

And there have been losses sporting as well as financial over the last few years. At one time, players (Arthur Ashe, for example) would trek to Chesnut Hill each year simply to reward the club that did so much to introduce real money into the game. But now many players stay away, criticizing the operation of the tournament and complaining that they are not taken care of in the grand style to which they are accustomed. Longwood, these tanned young athletes say, seems more like a "project of the month" put on by clubwomen than a serious sporting event.

In many respects the players are right, a fact some club members (perhaps tired of subsidizing a losing cause with their dues) are beginning to appreciate. The fate of the tourney is decided from year to year, committee members say; its continuation is the focus of an ongoing civil war. A major blow was the loss of the New England Merchants' National Bank as a sponsor of the event. The longtime supporter's departure left Longwood more dependent on ticket sales, and meant that committee members have to scramble every year to find new sponsors. This year, they include New England Rare Coin Galleries and Instrumentation Laboratories.

New funding won't erase the worst of Longwood's problems, however. The tournament will probably never rebound until its directors recognize the need for substantial professional help in running the affair. As professional tennis has turned big time, so has the organization of most stops along the Grand Prix circuit. Though the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) has been nominally involved since 1975 with supervising Longwood, only in the last two years have ATP experts been on hand before the tourney, and only in an advisory capacity. The long-established clique that has traditionally monopolized tourney direction continues to do so--it was their unprecedented decision to pay Connors to come, despite the friction it caused among other players and the members whose dues paid his appearance fee.

Sporadic attempts to involve more members in running the tourney have failed. Current President Merton E. Thompson sent letters to all club members asking for help, as did Harold Solomon, president of the ATP and this year's second seed. But many who offered aid were turned aside. One person wanted to sell advertising for the program; bickering over commissions and authority finally drove her away, as they have so many others.

It's time--indeed, it was time long ago--that the U.S. Professional Championship was run by professionals, who enjoy more than the thrill of being in charge, who will not make decisions on the basis of personal gain, who understand what the rest of the tour is like. Only then will the top players return, and they will probably be followed by ticket-buyers. Only then will Longwood have entered the new decade.