The departure of Michael Downey as the chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association – effective from June – will cause few ripples outside the core of the sport because the movement of highly paid executives rarely matters to anyone but removal van companies, accountants and spouses.
In this case, all three probably care more about Downey’s return to a similar post in his native Canada than do Andy Murray, Johanna Konta and the hundreds of British players who have prospered despite the clunking system rather than because of it during his truncated three-year stewardship.
The top-down patronage Downey inherited from his predecessor, Roger Draper, and which he has tried hard to change, was unanimously and correctly identified as one of the main reasons British tennis had stalled in the last century. At least now there is a determination to build the sport from the bottom up, which is a legacy of sorts.
Although critics cringe at some of the gimmicks Downey brought across the Atlantic, there is no disputing the game’s profile has risen and there is an air of optimism at large, even if it is driven almost wholly by Murray’s personal success and the triumph of the Great Britain Davis Cup team.
So the ever-smiling Canadian with a penchant for dandy dressing and management-speak – he grew up as a corporate beast – will be missed by those colleagues at the National Tennis Centre at Roehampton in south London who admired his energy and organisational skills. It appears the reason for his leaving, which had been rumbling for months, is personal rather than professional, and that is no crime.
“Over the past few months, my wife and I have been discussing how long we would stay in Britain,” he said on Thursday. “Although I enjoyed the job hugely, the pull back to Canada was strong. I have a 19-year-old son and a 21-year-old son there, and I felt the opportunity to spend time with them was running out. My wife also has an elderly mother with dementia.”
Anyone would sympathise with him for responding to those personal issues. However, there was always a lack of permanence about his appointment. There was a better local candidate for the job in Chris Kermode, who did not even make the very long list of candidates drawn up by the appointed head hunter, David Gregson. There were people ahead of Kermode in the queue who might have struggled to sell ice creams on a summer’s day.
Gregson grinned and blushed when asked at the time why he ignored a former player and proven administrator who was hugely popular in the locker room, knew British tennis culture from top to bottom and had overseen the most successful tournament outside Wimbledon for several years – the ATP World Tour Finals that have sold out nearly every session at the O2 Arena in Greenwich for several years, as well as Queen’s.
He said the game now had two excellent representatives at the top, as Kermode had gone on to lead the ATP. It was almost like a scene from Blackadder.
Who will replace the 59-year-old Downey? The LTA could do worse than phone Kermode. It is highly unlikely they will do so and almost certain he would decline; so the search will begin, in all probability, for a like-for-like replacement.
“It will take as long as it takes,” Gregson said. That is the way sport management works: grindingly. Those responsible for its administration view it as a business, often forgetting why we play games in the first place: for the sheer joy of it.
To his credit, Downey recognised that. But, given his inevitably brief tenure, he was never going to completely overhaul the culture of complacency that has gripped tennis in Britain since the days of Fred Perry. He leaves two years before his agreed five-year term is up and he has made some inroads. He shook up a few departments, trimmed some fat here and there and generally tried his best. But it was not enough. There is a long, long way to go before British tennis taps into its full potential.
The LTA – rather than just Downey and his team – missed a golden opportunity to sell the game to a much wider audience when they failed to come to a deal with Murray as their talisman after he won his first Wimbledon title in 2013.
That was a moment of magic that passed on the summer breeze. His image should have been plastered across every bus in London, television ads and posters, and schools should have been begging him for a bit of his precious time to inspire kids to pick up a racket. It never quite happened. Even now, there is a professional distance between the best player this country has ever had and the sport that applauds his success.
Downey did distribute 10,000 rackets throughout the country to kick-start some interest in tennis. It was one of his better stunts. As Gregson pointed out: “Michael set up 50 local authority relationships, established the Tennis for Kids programme that was built on the Davis Cup win, and has put great foundations in place for his successor.”
Running a sport is not glamorous. It is hard work. And, for the money on offer, it damn well should be. Downey was never going to turn around British tennis in three years, let alone five, as he said when he was appointed. But the game needs more than a short-term boost. It needs a long-term strategy, and, if it continues to spread the word in schools and cash-strapped authorities, it will at least be stumbling in the right direction.
