It’s a toss-up! Tennis boss Tiley has a contract – but is yet to sign

1 month ago 4

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Tennis is always about the future. The next serve, the next game, the next match, the next trophy. But barely 24 hours into the Australian Open, the big question is less about the future of the star players and much more about the future of the top administrator.

The mounting intrigue enveloping competition coverage on TV and news outlets, (yes, including this one), has been tantalising: What does the future hold for Tennis Australia’s chief executive, Craig Tiley?

Craig Tiley in one of the coaching pods he introduced for last year’s Open.

Thanks to a report in global sports publication Sportico late last year, it’s no secret Tiley is in the frame to run the US Open. Now Open Season hears he has actually been in possession of a contract that would give him the gig.

We can only assume he has yet to sign on any line because, as things stand, the Australian tennis big dog has not formally notified his employer of any departure, according to a source familiar with the situation but not permitted to publicly canvass it with us. As such, Tennis Australia has held off on bringing in a recruitment firm to sound out external candidates. (Well, as of Monday, but tennis is a fast-moving game.)

Tennis Australia would not be drawn on any of this, but in media appearances over the past week, Tiley has fended off questions about his future. Speaking to this masthead earlier this month, he said, “there’s a lot of speculation” and that he was “kind of not going to go there”. Hmm.

Then, phoning into ABC Radio Melbourne on Monday morning, Tiley again refused to rule anything in or out.

Asked if he could commit to remaining in the job until the Open returns this time next year, he said he had decided not to fuel speculation about his possible departure.

When pressed on whether he didn’t want to commit to being at Tennis Australia next year, Tiley said: “No, I just don’t want to commit to the speculation.” Make of that what you will.

Tiley was appointed director of tennis in 2005, and director of the Australian Open in 2006, before being promoted to Tennis Australia chief executive in 2013. Sportico’s December report said he was in “advanced talks” with the United States Tennis Association to become chief executive of the outfit that runs the US Open. It even speculated he might leave before the Australian Open started. Ah, no.

Tennis Australia’s new chairman, Chris Harrop, swiftly downplayed talk of Tiley’s possible departure – or that the Australian tennis governing body would suffer a brain drain should he ultimately go as rumoured.

“The team that he has built around him that actually makes this event ... as good as it is, that is not from one person. We have a very deep bench,” Harrop said at the weekend.

We don’t see anyone – and we are not exaggerating here – who has the skills to replace Tiley. Might the job be split? Let the speculation continue. After all, it’s one of the things tennis media does best.

Throwing, and catching, shade

Previously, we wrote that at a Melbourne major event, you are never more than 10 metres away from an Instagram influencer or a Collingwood footballer. We now feel compelled to provide an update: at a Melbourne major event, you are never more than 10 metres away from an Instagram influencer or a Collingwood footballer or radio host Jacqui Felgate.

Jacqui Felgate at the AO Set in Style dinner on Sunday night.

The 3AW host is back from holidays this week and set to broadcast from Melbourne Park.

But annual leave did not slow Felgate’s formidable solo-operated breaking news service, otherwise known as her Instagram account.

Felgate knows how to tap into a good yarn. And over summer the yarn that got Victoria jumping above all others was vision of cabanas clogging up Lorne beach, which went viral with 10,000 likes and 12,900 shares.

Cue statewide uproar over the propensity of cabanas, particularly the CoolCabanas brand, to clog up beaches, and then be left empty for hours, the 2020s equivalent of the 1980s practice of Germans sauntering down to the Phuket resort pool at 8am and draping their beach towels over the best banana lounges.

At Tennis Australia’s “O” function on the opening night of the tennis, Felgate, attending alongside husband Michael, confided to us that she, in fact, owns a cabana herself, even though she had diplomatically avoided taking sides in the stoush.

It’s going to be a hot week at the tennis, so hopefully 3AW has sufficient sun cover for Felgate’s broadcasts. If not, she can always bring along her own shade while she goes about throwing it at others from 3pm to 6pm weekdays.

Bonding again

Early days, but this just might be the tennis headline of the year. “Pam Shriver: I took James Bond back to Australia to reunite him with his family”.

George Lazenby as 007 in the film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Shriver, 63, who won 22 grand slam doubles titles, including the Australian Open seven times, wrote in Britain’s Daily Telegraph about her complex relationship with George Lazenby, the boy from Goulburn who became an international model and as an actor had a single outing playing James Bond in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

“We spent six years in a turbulent marriage, which was dissolved in 2008,” the tennis star wrote. “But since his health has declined in later life, we have reconnected, and now I spend more time with him than I do with anyone except our three children: George Jnr, Sam and Kait.”