Compiled by PHILIP REID
Tennis plagued by pushy parents
WHY IS it that tennis, more than any other sport, seems to be plagued by the pushy parent/s syndrome?
We had more of it with the recent autobiography of Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario, where the Spaniard – a three-time French Open and one-time US Open champion – claims her parents made her “suffer a lot” and, more than that, she accused them of mishandling her €45 million fortune to the extent she is struggling to pay her debts.
In quotes attributed to Sánchez-Vicario by the Spanish magazine La Otra Cronjca, the player remarked: "My parents left me with nothing and now I am indebted to the (tax authorities) and I will not be quiet.
“My mother decided on my hair, my clothes . . . when I bought something on my own, she rarely like it. Today, I am without resources . . . I never questioned the way my father managed my money. I have been a victim. I was duped.”
This is just the latest in a litany of stories about players suffering from over-pushy parents.
The most infamous case probably concerned Jelena Dokic, whose father Damir – a former wrestler – was forcibly ejected from the US Open after arguing over the price of salmon in the players’ restaurant and once claimed the draw at the Australian Open was rigged against his daughter.
Ultimately, Jelena had enough and even went as far as switching her allegiance away from Serbia to represent Australia.
Her father’s response was to threaten to retaliate by dropping a nuclear warhead on Australia!
Mary Pierce was another grand slam champion to have parental issues: born in Canada, raised in the United States and who represented France in international tennis, Pierce had to take out a restraining order against her father, Jim, who was verbally abusive to her and to her opponents and the Women’s Tennis Association introduced the “Jim Pierce Rule” in an attempt to outlaw abusive behaviour by a player’s entourage.
As if to show that time is a healer, though, daughter and father have reconciled.
Case of better late than never
IT’S BEEN a bad week for cycling, but theses retrospective bans – to Alberto Contador and Jan Ullrich – come with a sense that the horse has well and truly bolted.
Still, perhaps a case of better late than never?
It’s just a shame they weren’t brought to account, a la Ben Johnson, in the actual act of winning.
Contador’s two-year ban handed out by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (which also stripped him of his 2010 Tour de France title) was probably the more meaningful from the point of view that the Spaniard is still racing (or, rather, was!) until the Cas’s ruling.
Ullrich’s ban for being, as CAS put it, “fully engaged” in the doping programme of Spanish doctor Eufeniano Fuentes will keep him out of any involvement in cycling until August 2013.
All his results from 2005 up to his retirement in 2007 will be annulled, although he retains his 1997 Tour de France win and the Olympic gold medal he won in 2000.
Golf clubs need to face up to challenging economic times
AS CASH-STRAPPED golf clubs here have discovered, the recession is about as much fun as gate-crashing a funeral.
If there is any solace for clubs – many of whom have instigated deferred or multi-staged payments to ensure membership fees drip-feed like a life’s blood into thirsty coffers – in Ireland, it is that they are not alone. Golf clubs all over Europe are feeling the pinch.
Indeed, a conference in Budapest in Hungary this week was informed that the number of golfers in Europe declined in 2011 after more than 20 years of growth.
In all, there was a nett loss of 46,000 registered golfers with Britain and Ireland (down a combined 42,700 or 3.1 per cent), Sweden (registering a 21,000, or 4.1 per cent fall) and Spain (down 9,700, or 2.9 per cent) recording the most significant reductions.
The KPMG report acknowledges that golf “is not a bellwether” for economic conditions in Europe but added the rider, “there is little doubt of the cause-and-effect link between the economy and the success of golf as a participation sport”.
It backed up this assessment by pointing out that the number of golfers in Europe has “more than doubled” in the past 25 years, “buoyed by economic growth and the spread of the game to both developed and emerging economies”.
Golf, though, was bitten by the recession in 2011 with the number of golf courses remaining stagnant but the level of participation declining.
KPMG noted the stagnation of Europe’s golf market can be attributed to two principal factors: 1) a significant decrease in registered golfers in some of Europe’s largest golf markets, notably Britain and Ireland; 2) a lack of dynamic growth in Europe’s emerging markets of Eastern Europe and South-East Mediterranean.
It is worth highlighting, however, that the decline in Ireland isn’t as clear-cut as the figures would indicate.
Although the numbers of registered golfers declined, it doesn’t mean players have stopped swivelling their hips in unleashing a TaylorMade R11 driver head in to the back of a Titleist ProV1s.
Although there has been a reduction in registered club members, many of these so-called “casual golfers” continue to play on a green-fee or pay-and-play basis, albeit not in competition (at least not officially!!!).
Club memberships may be feeling the pinch, but for those casual players on the daily grind of sussing out where to play on any given day, there is great value: for instance, the golfnow.iewebsite on Thursday was offering rounds of golf at The Island (€35), Royal Tara (€15), Castleknock (€22), South County (€15), Druids Heath (€25), New Forest (€15) or Corballis (€12) to demonstrate just how much value is out there.
It’s a buyer’s market, to be sure.
On the broader European scale, the KPMG survey suggests golf courses are “failing to respond appropriately to the challenging economic conditions and may be losing customers as a result”.
As Andrea Sartori, the head of KPMG’s Golf Advisory Practice put it, “golf clubs need to proactively and effectively face up to the challenging economic climate to retain members or attract new golfers. Based on our survey, rather than introducing youth and family programs and promotional packages, approximately 30-40 per cent of Europe’s operators and club managers actually increased prices in 2011.
“More than half of clubs have not invested in enhanced marketing, and many have not yet capitalised on the opportunities provided by online marketing and social marketing.”
One other aspect which the survey highlighted was golf remains a male-dominated sport in Europe, with 65 per cent of players men, 25 per cent women and 10 per cent juniors.
It’s not all doom and gloom when you appraise the figures. For instance, there was an increase in golfers in Germany (up 10,800), the Netherlands (a rise of 7,600), Finland (plus 4,600) and the Czech Republic (by 3,500), while the most interesting statistic that came out of emerging golf markets like Turkey and Serbia was the high proportion of children among golfers: 52 per cent in Turkey, 34 per cent in Serbia, which surely bodes well for the future.
Overall, though, the KPMG survey will confirm what many golf clubs here have discovered over the past few years: times are tough, and club membership fees come after mortgages, rent and food on the table in the list of priorities.
It’s a time to keep the chin up but probably more to have the vision for less traditional membership schemes.
Was Reali's call of the cute hoor variety?
NOT MANY of us had probably ever have heard of Achille Reali, the Italian commissioner who cited Stephen Ferris for the tip-tackle that wasn’t against Wales.
But rather than raging at the injustice of citing the Ulster flanker, I’m more inclined to think it was a call of what we like to call the cute hoor variety.
Signor Reali knew exactly what he was doing.
If he hadn’t cited Ferris, then Wayne Barnes’s (left) call would have been largely forgotten about except for by Irish rugby supporters.
By citing Ferris, he gave the full disciplinary panel the opportunity to exonerate Ferris of any wrong-doing and also, perhaps, to even highlight Barnes’s woefully wrong call.
If you're good enough, big clubs will find you
BASEBALL DOESN’T really do it for me, I must confess.
I’ve only ever been to two matches – one, as it happens, was in the old Yankee Stadium where the New York Yankees came up against the Dallas Rangers and a row ensued in the row in front between rival fans, who used verbal insults and hotdogs as weapons whilst the other was a less onerous and more enjoyable affair featuring my nephew in a Little League game on Long Island – but the sport doesn’t quite rope you in as, say, an end-to-end game of football would.
Still, you just had to be impressed by the news the Boston Red Sox had dipped out of their comfort zone by signing a teenager by the name of Daniel McGrath on a seven-year contract with a $400,000 sign-on bonus fee. What makes McGrath’s signing for the Red Sox all the more interesting is he didn’t soldier through Little Leagues or the American school system . . . he plied his trade in Australia, where baseball lags behind Aussie Rules, rugby – both union and league – tennis, golf and soccer in the mainstream of sports.
Perhaps it helps he had an American mother? Anyway, McGrath – who first donned a baseball mitt as a two-year-old – is a left-handed pitcher with a fastest pitch of 150 kph and who came to attention playing in an Under 18s competition on the Pacific island of Guam last month. He had 15 major league teams in the US pitch an offer to him . . . but for some reason the Boston Red Sox won out. Wonder why?
What his signing proves, though, is that if you’re good enough, the big clubs will find you.
