Larry Scott, chairman and CEO of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour for the past six years, has resigned his position to accept a job as commissioner of the NCAA's Pac-10 conference. Under Scott's leadership, there has been an advancement in the fight for equal prize money, and a generous increase in sponsorships of the tour.
Some of the more controversial innovations that occurred under Scott's leadership are the new tour calendar, the advent of on-court coaching with microphone-laden coaches, and what many of us consider the near-destruction of doubles via the elimination of the ad point and the substition of the super-tiebreak for the third set.
4 comments:
Hmmm, I'm not sure how to dub this: "Gettin' Out While the Gettin's Good," or "Slipping Away Under the Cover of Darkness"
I guess he won't have to deal with that whole messy Dubai debacle next year, after all, huh? Hey, I guess he didn't get where he is without knowing when's the best time to exit stage left.
Scott, do you remember how much longer the Sony Ericsson contract lasts? Because that end isn't looking too good, either.
I believe it runs until the end of 2010. So there's that.
That being said, he did accomplish a great deal of good things in his tenure. It's just easy to harp on the areas that were a bit wanting, I guess. Plus, it's difficult not to harp on the bad whenever one "top" position ends up being used as a stepping stone to a "bigger," higher-paying one, as is the case here.
With so much change at the top of the tours of late, one can't help but wonder if the opportunity might now exist for that "Comissioner of Professional Tennis" job to be created... but I'm sure that'll probably never happen.
I think it's fair to say that Scott did a lot for women's tennis, but sometimes it was at the expense of...women's tennis.
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