Make Me a Tournament Director
Last week I presented a leftist reimagining of the U.S. Open Wild Card Playoff and appointed myself the inaugural USTA Czar of Gimmick Events. Today, I take the next step toward I fulfilling my destiny as the greatest tournament director in the history of American tennis.
Below, I’ve outlined my proposition for the most ambitious and ideologically sound event on the professional calendar.
I give you: The Leftist Open (Presented by Verso Books).
The Logistics
The inaugural Leftist Open will take place a year from now, replacing the distinctly not leftist Mubadala Citi Open in D.C., and will be both an ATP and WTA 500 level event.
Instead of being hosted by a club or tennis center or “elite” University, the Leftist Open will be held at public parks and matches swill be played on unmodified courts with no grandstands. It will be tennis for the people how the people play it. All matches, in that spirit, will be unticketed and open to the public.
I’d propose that New York hosts the first year, as an anti U.S. Open, with early rounds across the five boroughs and the finals to be played at Chelsea Piers, some of the only city courts that do not require a tennis pass. In future, though, the event could move around the country.
The Ground Rules
Mandatory participation in all three events
That means singles, doubles, and mixed for everyone. However, as not to deprive the doubles specialists from a week of work, entrants will be selected by a weighted combination of singles and doubles rankings. For instance, Carlitos, the world number one in singles, who’s unranked in doubles, would be given equal standing with doubles world number one Wesley Koolhof (who’s unranked in singles), but both would have a lower combined ranking than Max Cressey, who’s top hundred in both.
To create fun and even pairings, all partnerships will be determined by random drawing.
Equal and Inverse Prize Money
What does this mean? Great question. Equal prize money means what it sounds like. Equal pay for ATP and WTA players and even pay distribution between singles, doubles, and mixed.
Inverse pay, however, is an original concept. In a standard, capitalist, tennis tournament, pay and ranking points increase as players advance, round by round. At the Leftist Open, this changes. While ranking points, the dominion of the corrupt bureaucrats, will be beyond my control, money is not.
All players will be awarded an equal amount of maximum prize money at the start of the tournament, HOWEVER, for each match they win, that number decreases. So, players must perform a material calculus: do they value money or points? Will this result in matches where both players or teams are, potentially, trying to lose? Absolutely. It’ll be great.
Re-Education Program for Reactionary Players
At the discretion of the tournament director (me), players deemed reactionary will be subject to mandatory re-education, should they wish to compete. For stars such as Alexander Zverev, Nick Kyrgios, and basically every white American Men’s player that will mean active participation in a regular reading group facilitated by tournament sponsor Verso Books. They will then present, before the event’s conclusion, an original hybrid work that expresses both the evolution of their ideology and the theoretical underpinning of this change, to a tribunal of leftist tennis players at the New School. Should their work be considered unsatisfactory, offending players will be stripped of all prize money and points and ordered to spend the remainder of the Leftist Open at the Tournament Gulag (KGB Bar Red Room) where they will be made to listen to me explain the Division 3 Tennis Blog in excruciating detail.
There will also be a supplementary re-education program for any players who have publicly endorsed or played Pickleball. Their work will be of a more material nature—under supervision of a CLT party official, these players will be manually removing Pickleball courts around the city.
I Get to Play
Finally, the most import rule change.
Power, as we all know, corrupts. Despite my ideals, I am not above this. For that reason, I will preemptively allow myself this one corruption. I get a wild card into the event and am able to use any and all of my influence as tournament director to sabotage the rest of the field. I can radically change the times of matches. I can pay off officials. I can pick my doubles partners. I can bribe onsite stringers to sabotage equipment. It’s all fair game.
Also, from an educational perspective, my presence in the field will help elucidate to viewers just how good at tennis these pro players are, because they will make me look very very bad.
Final Thoughts
Things are, admittedly, heating up in the tennis tournaments that actually exist, so starting next week I’ll likely get back to writing about that. And, before we know it, it’ll be the U.S. Open. According to rumor, the CLT Substack will be quite active those two weeks. Stay tuned.
Love all of this. One minor suggestion: Going forward, please consider lowercasing “pickleball.” Capitalizing it appears to convey more significance than it deserves. Thanks.
I back all of this, and am wondering if there are plans for another CLT merch drop. I’m new here and would love to wear a hat to the Leftist Open (and the W&S)