[NOISE] Welcome. We want to welcome Gavin Forbes, an old friend from IMG tennis days. And welcome to our class. Gavin, give us a little background on your board membership with the ATP. What does the ATP do? We have your bio, so we know all the many years you've been representing players. But what does the umbrella association do for those players? >> All right. So the ATP was formed as a breakaway from the Men's Professional Tennis Council. It was MIPTC. And basically, what the players at the time felt was that

they wanted to govern their own destiny, and they wanted to create their own tour. They felt there were too many rules about entries and withdrawals and fines, and things of that nature. As well as they wanted be more involved in the prize money negotiations. So I don't know if you guys will remember this, but there was a walk out at the US Open in 1990. And basically, the creation of the ATP Tour took place at that time. Hamilton Jordan was the chap who was actually leading it. And he created an association that was formed of members. And the members were the tournaments on the one side and the players on the other side.

And basically, there was a set of by-laws that were drafted, and the by-laws were there to protect the members. And also to create rules that the members had to abide by.

The representation was in the form of a tournament council for the tournaments, and a player council for the players. And these councils are slightly different but they're in general, basically comprised of all levels of membership. Where the small tournaments through the big ones and then lower ranked players, doubles, up to the highest ranked players. And there are three representatives for each group, and then there's a chairman. And so almost all the votes are able to be tiebreaked by the chairman, with the exception of a few, like format changes. Big for a tournament to actually get kicked off the tour, that has to be a super majority vote, which would require two votes on the tournament side and two votes on the player's side.

So what my position is, I'm elected by the tournaments in the Americas. The tournaments are done regionally. So it's the Americas, which consists of Canada, North America and South and Central America.

And I represent all the tournaments from small to large. >> That's awesome. And just going forward then, I just wanted to hear a little bit, by way of background, about the IMG, and its tennis academies, and the growth of that. And how it feeds into players at the various levels, as you've just described. As they come in and qualify and start to develop their career and hopefully you'll represent them. They're lucky if you do. But how does the IMG Academy now develop pre-professional tennis players? >> Well, the academy has evolved, as has the game of tennis. But it's still essentially the same. And basically what happens is, we try and recruit within reason. Because again, you can't run an academy if you're giving free scholarships to every kid. But we try and recruit a select group of athletes from around the world. And it truly is international. And they are trained at the academy.

There is a slight distinction in America, because the European athletes are allowed to accept money in the form of a contract, a small contract. A racket deal, a clothing deal or any other deal, if there's one available.

The US athletes would like to, well, have to, if they want to have any sort of going to college, remain amateur, which means they can't take money. They can go there and get training.

The goal that we have at the academy is to get the small group of young guys and girls at various age levels, starting at around 14. We think younger than that is too young. It is getting younger and younger. But starting at about that age, having them compete against each other and receive the good training, that is available at the academy. And obviously, the ability to travel with a coach or two and go to these junior tournaments.

We like to, IMG, help them by giving them things called wild cards into some of our events. And a wild card is something that is given to the tournament promoter. And it's anywhere between two and five spots in the main draw of a tournament or the qualifying of a tournament. And, so it gives a young kid a little appetite into the big leagues. And we use these to help develop the players. And also to show them that with IMG, they could actually get the best opportunity to break into the pro leagues. And then hopefully, make the big bucks they all expect, and become clients of IMG's. >> We asked you to speak to exactly that paradigm with Sharapova. Who there's a famous HBS, Harvard Business School case study or two. About her growth from the academies through and including become a world famous super star athlete that transcends even tennis. And you've been heavily involved in that. Maybe you could speak to that trajectory, generally. And then compare and contrast that with Kournikova, who went a different way. >> Right, right. Well both of them were at the academy. So, I'll start with Maria. I was obviously directly involved. And Maria was one of those exceptional, almost Beethoven-like young children. I actually received a call from Mark McCormick's wife's mother saying, when you come to the academy, I really want you to meet this young girl. She's from Russia, she's staying with a friend of mine. She's with her dad, they don't really have any money.

And she's determined, and apparently very good. I mean we used to get and still do, get calls like that often. And I'd say 99 times out of 100, the player doesn't turn out to be that special, right? They're good but they're not special.

I traveled down there, here comes this little girl, she was nine years old, just turned nine years old. Her knees were bigger than her legs. I mean they're like little bumpy knees and long blonde hair. Very direct way about her. And I said to her, nice to meet you, what would you like to do? She said, I want to become the best tennis player in the world. Which I hear sometimes, but never with this kind of intense kind of focus. And so I said to her, why don't you just hit the ball for 10 minutes and we'll take a look. And needless to say, about 30 minutes later, she'd probably missed two balls and I mean, she just never missed. So this little girl is out there hitting tennis balls, right? In the mean time, I'm sitting and talking to her dad. Who basically, speaks decent English and who says to me that he realized at an early age that his daughter had this gift from God. And he said, he couldn't deny her the opportunity to take advantage of this gift. He said, she wanted it so badly. And he said that he had given up everything that he had in Russia,

including seeing his wife. And he traveled to the United States. And he basically, was trying to give her every opportunity.

I asked him what he was doing. He said he was working as a groundskeeper at a public golf course. And he was in charge of like groundskeeping specifically, making the hole for the pin and they move it around. So basically, he said to me, I said to him, what do you need? You know what? I mean, you tell me in a perfect world, what you would need for you and your daughter. He said, well, I need her to have a scholarship and a place to train. And I said, well, that's done. She has one. And then he said, I've worked out this budget. And I think I would need a second hand motor car. And I've already looked at a couple of places and I think I'd rather get an SUV, because I'll be traveling around and I would like to be safe.

Which, you know. And he said, and then I've found a couple of apartments that I'd like to work with, to rent. And he had this whole budget, right? He worked on a food. And so, what we ended up doing was saying, "Fine, we're going to make a deal with you." Maria will get a scholarship and we will give you a loan. And so that you can afford to get these things that you need to survive.

And that's how it started.

And I will say this, his name is Yuri Sharapov. I mean, Yuri, obviously, dedicated his life to it. He clearly was an emotional man. And he definitely, got some, got a few spanks for being a little crazy on the side of the court. But at the end of the day, he was basically, 100% focused on devoting his life to making his daughter the best player she could be. And clearly, it worked, right? It was a project that I mean, if you'd looked at it then, you would have said the chances of her doing that even with her extraordinary ability, were not that great. Anyway, we lent him them the money.

Showed them to a couple of companies. The companies, Nike was one, and Prince at the time was another. And they both stepped behind her and believed in her. And it went on from nine until she was 16 years old, just turning 17. And then she won Wimbledon.

And suddenly she went from, and that was the beginning of Maria. And she just got to the finals of the French Open, about an hour ago. So >> [INAUDIBLE] >> She got a chance to win, yeah. She got a chance to win again. And that was a great story of taking a client all the way from the beginning through the academy system to the top, top level of the pros. >> Talk to us about Wimbledon. I know you still work with them. How important is winning Wimbledon? Did that break it wide open for her? And all the categories that she then exploited? >> Yeah. I think, look, winning a grand slam is what it's all about for any tennis player, right?

You might find some Americans would say the U.S. Open. But I think most players would say Wimbledon is kind of the Masters of the tennis grand slams. And first of all, being such a young girl, so kind of endearing to the crowd. She, nobody expected it.

And then obviously, the fact that she beat Serena. And you know, Serena was pretty gracious. and Maria, the way she did it at such a young age. Combined with the fact that she was just a super attractive girl that had an amazing ability beyond her years, to be able to sit down in a press room. And always said the right thing. Part of that was because I think she listens to the people around her very well. But a lot of it and maybe most of it, is just because Maria is just one those exceptional people that is the full package. And she captured everybody's heart. Max Eisenbud, who was a young guy that had kind of stayed at the academy and worked her through. And myself, just started getting phone calls pretty much straight away from both the IMG people. I mean, she had a Motorola deal.

Literally, the guy called that weekend because I don't know if you know, she picked her phone and called her mom. And so the guys at IMG saw that, jumped on it, called their connection at Motorola. And boom, they were all over it and then it just snowballed. And the more people saw how good she was endorsing their product, the more other products wanted her to become involved. And so it was a really fun experience because I don't think it gets better than that. >> Can you juxtapose, I do want to come back to Kournikova, a road less, or differently traveled. But the Williams sisters whom you've represented on and off over the years. How is their trajectory different or limited perhaps, just because of personality?

>> Well, and I think that well, the Williams sisters were, first of all they were sisters. I mean, they were also an extraordinary story. their father traveled another road. But also, predicted from an early age, to IMG and everybody else that you know, these young girls were, he was going to make superstars. And he said, he'll tell you a story but he actually just was watching a match between Chris Evert and Martina and he saw the big paycheck, which in those days was small compared to now. But he said wow, how hard can that be? I'm going to have these daughters of mine become tennis champions because look at me, You might, my wife, we're certainly athletic specimens. And I'm going to do that. And again, that's from the very beginning.

The difference I think was that Maria did it early on, I think for the Williams, they came along, Martina Hingis was right up there at the time.

Maybe Henin and Clijsters and there were some really good players, Lindsay Davenport. And I think that basically, that it took the Williams sisters a little longer and Venus actually was the one who did it in the beginning. And then Serena came along and turned out to be the one that really was maybe hungrier. And funny enough, Mr. Williams said, Serena wants it more than Venus, even when they were younger. So I think it was a little bit of slower rise than Maria, who kind of bounced onto the scene.

There were criticisms along the way of the Williams sisters. Maybe one letting the other one win, and stuff that if you talked to them, they'll tell you it's complete baloney. But people chose to believe whatever they want to believe. But I do think that it took them maybe a little bit longer to rise to the top. And I do think that they had some advantages too, because they were sisters. And so I remember we did a Wrigley's Double Mint Gum deal. We did a few deals where you could use both of them together. And a little bit like the Manning's in a way. You've got the advantage of having two siblings. And again, another great story. Because they took tennis to a whole other place in the city. And I think it was wonderful for the sport and good for America. And they've had a lot of longevity and I think they've both given quite a lot back to the sport as well. And Venus has been even more, so Serena's been focusing on winning. But another good story. >> I was with you, or Tony Godsick at the time Kournikova decided to go a different direction. I don't mean to pick on her. But not so much tennis, it's the off court stuff I'm going to pursue and maybe give up, well documented success on the court for opportunities off. How do you recommend a particular player make that decision? >> Well, I mean, we always like to tell a player that basically, you've gotta focus on your tennis. And you've got to, I think one of the things that makes IMG very good at what they do is their ability to actually try and navigate a player or navigate a player through their career. And get them to focus on what's going to get you, the Grand Slams, the top ranking, the number ones at the end of the year. Because ultimately, if you do all that all the other stuff's going to come. As long as you don't do anything completely crazy. But if you do that, it's going to come. Now having said that, it's not only the player but it's the people around the player. Sometimes the parents. There are external forces, for lack of a better word, that basically can lead a player in the wrong direction. And to be honest, a lot these players that come along, they don't necessarily have huge amounts of cash, right? And they haven't come from that. And when somebody starts saying to somebody, well, I'm going to give you even $100,000. It's a lot of money to somebody who's never seen $1,000. So I think what happened with Kournikova was a couple of things. Number one, she was absolutely gorgeous looking young girl. And she was definitely, basically for lack of a better word, cocky. And she kind of knew it, and I mean that in a good way. I mean so she had this air about her that was like, let's bring it on and she was very good as a junior. It was her and Martina Hingis, were the ones. And I remember they got to the finals of Junior Wimbledon and Hingis won it, but Kournikova, as I said, was phenomenal looking. I mean she should have had a modeling career, no question. Forget the tennis, right? And I think that's kind of the angle that she decided to take, not even intentionally.

When you do endorsements as an athlete, what happens is, you get your money. But in return for your money, you've gotta do commercials and you've gotta do appearances and you've gotta do things to earn your money.

That requires time. And what we like to do as a management company is try and make sure that not only are we associating you with the right blue chip companies. But that we're making sure that you actually have time to go play tennis tournaments. You're not chasing cash all over the place, right? because it's that short term chase. And I mean needless to say, Anna Kournikova made a ton of money over her career. But I think she might look back and regret it and say, well, I wish I'd won a couple of events and done maybe better in my tennis.

And maybe she doesn't. I haven't discussed it with her, actually. But I mean, that's an example of somebody I think who certainly had the talent.

And because of the external distractions and because of the fact that she was so attractive as just a simple model, she went the other direction. And maybe underachieved, so to speak. [SOUND]

Gavin Forbes - Representing Tennis Players Pt. I

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