Chris Kermode, the departing head of the ATP, has resisted the temptation to leave the party swinging after six largely successful years, but he admitted on Wednesday that being levered out of the job by a cabal of senior players “did hurt”.
Kermode, an energetic and affable executive chairman and president, was brought down in a players’ coup that began in March when Novak Djokovic led a revolt against his governance. He leaves next month on the eve of the ATP Cup, his last contribution to the game, which starts on 3 January and runs for 10 days in Perth, Brisbane and Sydney before the Australian Open in Melbourne.
Speaking at the ATP Finals, which he helped transform into the biggest money-spinner in tennis outside the slams and which moves to Turin in 2021 after 12 years in the capital, Kermode spoke on the record for the first time about the back-room bickering that has bedevilled the sport for years.
“It was difficult in March, no question about it,” he said of the players’ meeting in Indian Wells that set in train his ousting. “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. It did. But you move on. It happens.”
The wrangling continued almost on a monthly basis throughout his tenure. Now the players’ council, with Djokovic still at the helm, will deal with a new chairman, the former player Andrea Gaudenzi, a 46-year-old Italian Kermode likes and admires, although he predicts his job will not be easy. The board have chosen to split the executive role in two, and have yet to appoint a chief executive officer.
“The idea of the split role came from the board, not me,” Kermode says. “On paper, it’s logical in that you have a chairman who can maybe not be bogged down in the day-to-day running of the company, someone who can have a much higher view and be detached from it. Then the CEO comes in and runs the business. My only concern is that ultimately someone has to vote, and whoever has the vote will get drawn into the politics.”
That was the nub of Kermode’s dilemma: playing referee between players and tournament owners. Djokovic considered it an insoluble conflict of interest; Kermode said it was the only sensible way to bring the two sides together. Nor does he agree with Djokovic’s push for a players’ union, as it could dissolve into the sort of franchise wars that plague American sport.
Kermode concedes he “ruffled feathers” from the moment he took the job: “It was a miracle I got a second term,” he laughed. He leaves the game smiling, though, and says of the future: “I think it will all calm down. I’ve had meetings with the grand slams, WTA, ITF, and I said: ‘We’re all in the same business. We all want tennis to be bigger. I want the Davis Cup to be successful. I want the WTA to be successful. Because it’s tennis. Equally, you have to allow the ATP to grow. We should all be growing.”
