Craig Tiley, Andrea Gaudenzi at odds about the future of tennis

Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley is “locked in battle” with ATP Chair Andrea Gaudenzi over the sport’s direction following a reveal that Saudi Arabia’s PIF had made a “take it or leave it” $1B offer to merge the men’s and women’s tours, according to Marc McGowan of the Melbourne AGE. The Saudi power play, which reportedly has a 90-day expiration period, “threatens to interrupt, and even ruin, the traditional lead-up to the Australian Open,” with a new Masters 1000 event in the Middle East country to “start each season in January a key part of the PIF pitch.” Tiley and Gaudenzi are “drastically opposed on the advent of the Saudi Masters,” with the Australian Open boss instead an “advocate for the proposed F1-style Premium Tour.” McGowan notes the Premium Tour vision is to bring together 10 elite events, including the grand slams, to “form a more streamlined calendar that provides more rest for players, an easier tour for fans to follow, and ideally more money for the sport that could also trickle down to the lower-ranked battlers.” Tiley has “maintained a cautious positivity publicly about the Saudis’ interest in tennis,” albeit with an asterisk -- that “any move into the sport was not detrimental to a ‘long-standing partner’.” McGowan adds in other words, he does not want the summer Down Under, including the season-opening United Cup, to be impacted -- and a Saudi Masters event “would almost certainly lead to the United Cup's demise.” Gaudenzi informed the Masters 1000 chiefs of the PIF offer, which would “elevate him to commissioner of both tours,” at the Indian Wells Masters this past weekend, following more discussions about the Premium Tour (Melbourne AGE, 3/13).

BLINDSIDE HIT: In London, Simon Briggs writes Gaudenzi has “never been a clubbable sort of chap" as he is “not well liked among the four majors,” and has an “especially tense relationship” with Tiley. During Saturday’s tournament meetings in Indian Wells, Gaudenzi “blindsided the slams by waiting until they had left the room before he unveiled his Saudi blueprint.” This is “hardly the way to win them over.” One source said that if Gaudenzi “had been offered the job of running the Premium Tour,” he might well have “bought into the project immediately, and thus carried the whole ATP Tour with him.” But the Premium Tour is “Tiley’s baby, so this was never going to happen.” As a result, the first half of the Indian Wells meetings “involved a lot of humming and ahhing,” with several tournaments playing for time and suggesting that they “might return to the Premium Tour concept during the French Open in May.” Either solution -- the Premium Tour or the Gaudenzi gambit -- “looks like a win for the women, offering them equal prize money across the tour at last.” Briggs: “But which will they sign up for? Even if the WTA are the least powerful body in this conversation, they could still hold a casting vote” (London TELEGRAPH, 3/13).