Philadelphia Racquet Club Cancels This Weekend's Pro Doubles Tournament
By Rob Dinerman © 2003; all rights of reproduction reserved.
Nov 4, 2003      

On the morning of October 29th, just nine days before the qualifying matches were scheduled to begin this Friday morning, the Philadelphia Racquet Club informed ISDA Executive Director James Hewitt that the $ 20,000 tour stop it was planning to host from November 7-9 had been cancelled due to sponsor withdrawal. Repeated phone messages left late last week and over the weekend by Hewitt and ISDA President Gary Waite for PRC head pro and tournament chairman Rob
Whitehouse in the wake of this news and in an attempt to salvage the
situation have, as of this early Tuesday writing, not been returned.

This is the second tournament cancellation (previously Vancouver) of the
2003-2004 ISDA season, and the second consecutive year in which this particular site has failed to fulfill a tournament commitment to the ISDA.

Last season the PRC event was reduced from a ranking to a non-ranking event when the prize money fell below the $ 20,000 minimum ranking level. But at least the downgrading of that 2002 event was made known more than a month before the tournament was set to begin, as was also true of the recent Vancouver cancellation.

By contrast, the cancellation (which arose when several important and verbally committed sponsors withdrew their support early last week) of this 2003 Philadelphia tournament was communicated with such little lead time that the
draw and starting times had long since been disseminated and, more importantly,
many of the players found themselves suddenly deprived of the competitive
and remunerative opportunity they had been counting on and stuck with the
non-refundable plane tickets they had purchased early enough to take advantage of the 14-day advance benefit most airlines offer.

The entire unfortunate episode, especially with the Vancouver backdrop, has brought a harsh dose of reality to the previously charmed (and completely cancellation-free) life that the ISDA had led during its prior four years of existence. More to the point, it raises serious questions both about the integrity of the remainder of the ISDA schedule, which currently lists 20 stops (one of which, set for early March, is slated for a site whose doubles court is not projected to be fully constructed until late January) from October to May, and, indeed, about the ISDA's ability to enforce the commitments that are made to it by the various clubs that it has awarded slots on the schedule.

Unlike the Maryland Club, which had the foresight and acumen to make sure that its entire $ 45,000 tournament budget was in hand almost two months before the event happened, many of the sites do not come into possession of all the required funds until very close to the tournament starting time. And the PRC self-evidently did not fear any repercussions, legal or otherwise, from the ISDA that might have resulted from its late pull-out to a sufficient degree to make it feel compelled to run the tournament and absorb the additional loss caused when several of its sponsoring members changed their minds.

Also at issue is the matter of the ISDA's obligations to its members to make good on tournaments it lists on its schedule. Just as the ISDA trusted the PRC to act in good faith on its promise to hold the tournament, so the 28 members (i.e. comprising the 14 teams) that signed up and put themselves on the hook for travel and hotel expenses trusted the ISDA to deliver on its promise that the tournament it put on its official schedule would indeed occur.

Hewitt and Waite are considering a possible partial reimbursement of the PRC
entrants who made these expense commitments, but it is hard to see how everyone involved can be made fully whole, and in any event the financial opportunity that the tournament represented is definitely gone.

So too, especially sadly in view of the plethora of upsets, near-upsets and extraordinarily high-quality matches that occurred at the Maryland Club Open, is the chance to see if the various teams that prospered in Baltimore could have consolidated their new-found emergence with a comparable follow-up
performance one week later. The next ranking event, in Montreal, is more
than a month off, and by that time there will be no carry-over effect from what
occurred this past weekend.

Clearly the ISDA has made a major impact on the squash marketplace with
the magnetism exuded by such charismatic stars as Damien Mudge, Gary Waite
and Viktor Berg and the entertainment value of its product, which has been
hugely popular wherever the tour has gone in this continent. That some growing
pains would eventually arise was almost inevitable; in retrospect, it is amazing
that it took this long for them to make their unwelcome appearance. Waite
and Hewitt have by any standard been miracle workers in getting this enterprise
to its current praiseworthy level as quickly as they have, especially in the
present difficult economic environment.

But it is also equally clear that a more formalized professional approach is now sorely needed to further the growth of the ISDA and to prevent, or at least greatly diminish, the likelihood that such disillusioning cancellations will recur going forward.

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