Chris KermodeProud of Everything He Has Done at the ATP
Outgoing ATP Executive Chairman and President, Chris Kermode says that he plans to take a whole month off after his terms ends at the end of this year and he would then decide what his next move would be.
In an interview with SportsProMedia, Kermode says, "My initial plan is to take the month of January off and to put my feet up and see what the next move is. I’ve been fully committed. When the vote happened in March, I [said I] would do the same commitment up to 31st December, totally focused on everything that needs to be done - this event, the ATP Cup, and everything in between. I didn’t want to take my eye off the ball. As I said, I’m very proud of what I’ve done and want to continue to see it through, and then, at the end of the year, take a bit of time and see where we end up.”
Kermode says he thinks the ATP is in good hand with the new generation coming up to speed with the old generation and he feels that the recently concluded ATP Finals was the most exciting finals ever. “This is probably the most exciting finals that we’ve had. We’ve lived in this amazing generation. This crossroads now - of having these icons of the game against the young guns - is incredible. Some of the matches between the two generations, the standard of tennis, has been off the charts. The thing I’m most proud of with this event (ATP Finals) is we did things and we tried things that had never been done before. People thought we were a little bit extreme and it’s now become the template for every single indoor tennis event in the world. I’m very proud that it’s become the model and the benchmark.”
On the ATP Cup, which has come under criticism from many quarters as to whether tennis can have two big team competitions so close to one another, Kermode says still believes the ATP Cup is a good idea. “The ATP Cup is another event that virtually everybody in tennis told me we would never get off the ground. When you make changes, you are going to ruffle some feathers - there’s no question about that. But I think you’ll look back in five years’ time and [see that] this really has become quite a major, major sporting event. Fundamentally, no one likes change. When I said, ‘let’s do it’, I think people thought, ‘Fine, we’ll go along with him because it won’t actually happen’. And there were many people who tried to derail the process in the almost three years it took to get it off the ground. But I believe in it. For the players, it’s created another big payday, it’s a US$15 million event, so it ticked that box [marked] player compensation. It’s a huge event. It starts the season off with a bang and then we bookend the calendar with the ATP Finals at the end of the year. So we can tell a story all the way through the year.”
from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2YnQ1YY
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