Posted by Peter Bodo, TENNIS.com
As tempting as it is to get up on a high horse when a controversy like the recent Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships tempest blows through the sport, it's sometimes more enlightening -- and wiser -- to accept the facts and analyze whose ambitions were served, whose goals were met and how the parties involved ended up looking when the dust finally settled.
So let's take the players in this scenario in order of importance:
The WTA: Faced with an opportunity to show group strength and solidarity in an unambiguous situation, the organization failed miserably. The decision to deny Shahar Peer a visa to enter Dubai and play the event clearly and obviously violated the basic agreement that applies to every sanctioned WTA event; that alone should have been enough to make the WTA players rally around their flag -- and their wronged player. They did not.
In 1973, The ATP men boycotted Wimbledon over a far less explosive issue, and the willingness of most of the top players to stand together made a powerful statement about the organization. In L'affair Peer, the WTA players threw Peer under the bus, and in a way that had far less to do with the politics of the Middle East than it did the basic indifference of the WTA women to the real or imagined integrity of their own organization.
And let's not forget that this was an enormous, missed opportunity for the WTA. It's not about the publicity -- but imagine the PR coup the WTA would have pulled off if it had rallied around Peer and either forced Dubai to allow her to play or brought the tournament to a grinding halt.
Larry Scott: As the CEO of the WTA Tour, Scott takes a big hit. Those who want to go to town on him for putting the integrity of the game into the backseat for the sake of a few million bucks are entitled to their field day. Those who want to accuse him of capitulating to an intolerable show of prejudice and bigotry can take their shots. But what's worse is that the Dubai promoters made Scott look weak and naïve with their bait-and-switch move (denying Peer her visa at the last minute, by which time most of the WTA players were in Dubai and in tournament mode).
Bureaucrats, politicians and sports administrators the world over will feel boundless sympathy for Scott, and a good deal of it is deserved. But that's neither here nor there in the big picture. The fact is, Scott got played, big-time, and you just know that's got to rankle anyone with a CEO-grade ego.
Shahar Peer: She was denied a good chance to improve on her top-50 ranking while playing on the hard courts she likes -- and just a hop, skip and a jump (theoretically, at least) from home. The compensation she'll earn as the WTA launches some rear-guard actions to sanction Dubai will help soften the blow, and she'll get a tremendous amount of public support for having been the victim of Dubai's chilling policy. Unlike every other principal in this drama, not a smidgen of blame or criticism can be leveled at her. It's a net gain for Peer, albeit one she'd probably rather not enjoy.
Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships: I'm not going to get specific here, but in many places in the world the ability to outsmart a rival, by any means necessary, is considered a great victory. The promoters of Dubai were able to fulfill mutually exclusive goals (stage a major international tournament and have it be free of Israelis), and in some circles that will be taken as an example of brilliant business maneuvering sweetened by the sense that it represented a political coup as well.
So there you have it. Dubai has bought another year's worth of wiggle room for its event, which is a familiar story by now. They shouldn't even call this tennis -- it's a shell game, but the ATP and WTA can't resist. There is, after all, all that money lying right there on the table.
Peter Bodo
