On Sunday morning, during the traditional end-of-tournament press conference at the end of this year’s Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters, it will become public that Zeljko Franulovic will step down as Tournament Director, a position he has held since 2005. During his days as a professional tennis player, Franulovic won the Monte-Carlo Open in 1970 when he defeated in the final Manolo Orantes 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 and he was still playing under the Yugoslavian flag – he is from Split, Croatia, although he was born on the island of Korčula.
Born in 1947, Franulovic, who will turn 75 next June, has been the Tournament Director in Monte Carlo since 2005, when the tournament was won by Rafael Nadal for the first of his 11 triumphs in the Principality. His best ranking was n. 6, but it would have been higher had the ATP ranking existed before August 1973, because he obtained his best result prior to the introduction of the computerized ranking. In particular, he was a finalist at Roland Garros in 1970 when he lost to Jan Kodes, and during the same year, he also won the Grand Prix of Buenos Aires defeating in the final the favorite of the draw Ilie Nastase.
Roland Garros was certainly his most successful Major, mainly thanks to how his slice backhand remained low on clay courts. He had already reached the quarterfinals in 1969 and would advance to the semifinal also in 1971, the year after the final he reached as an outsider since the first eight seeds of the tournament were Gimeno, Hoad, Taylor, Riessen, Pasarell, Meiler, Drysdale and Nastase. That year he defeated Bartlett, Eischenbrioch. Barthes, Phillips-Moore, Nastase (in 4 sets) and Orantes in the semifinals.
Franulovic is conversant in several languages: in addition to all the languages spoken in the Balkans, he is also fluent in Italian, French and English, and he speaks also a bit of German. He was Captain of the Croatian Davis Cup Team between 1994 and 1997. He also held the role of Representative for the European tournaments on the ATP Board of Directors, where he served between 2007 and 2009.
I happened to play against him a couple of times in doubles: he was playing with Boro Jovanovic (born in 1939) while I was coupled with Beppino Bonardi at the two international tournaments in Florence and Viareggio, Italy where we crossed paths. During our first match, Bonardi and I were leading 4-1 in the deciding set, but we ended up losing. Jovanovic, originally from Zagreb, Croatia, had been a finalist at Wimbledon in 1962 when he had played with Niki Pilic. Franulovic and Jovanovic were obviously better players: maybe they had just underestimated us during our first match, but the second time around we had no chance.
The main candidates to replace Franulovic as Tournament Director in Monte Carlo are two English men with an ATP background. The first one is Chris Kermode, who was the Chairman of the ATP for six years before Andrea Gaudenzi took over at the beginning of 2020, and is now Vice Chairman of the Professional Triathletes Organization. The other candidate is David Massey, who is currently the Adjoint Director for the Monte Carlo Country Club and seems to be the slight favorite in the race because he has been living in Monaco for some time, he is married to a French lady with whom he has three children and he has an excellent personal relationship with Baroness Melanie de Massy, daughter to the late Baroness Elizabeth-Ann de Massy who has been President of the Monte Carlo Country Club and the Monegasque Tennis Federation for many years until her death on 10 June 2020.
Of course, Melanie could have a great influence over the final decision. The Principality of Monaco is very close to the ATP, which has its European offices in Monte Carlo. However, even if the Principality would like to maintain its privileged relationship with the ATP, it would probably be inclined to maintain some kind of independence, and from this point of view Massey, who has been Vice President for Europe of the ATP between 2010 and 2019 would be a better candidate than Kermode, whose allegiance may appear more questionable, given his previous role within the men’s tour.
I spoke to Massey a few times in the past few days and I was favourably impressed by him: he attended the University of Bristol, England, for four years and he started his career at the ATP as an unpaid intern.
Kermode is more of a politician, and I don’t like politicians too much, especially when they take you for a ride with half-lies and half-truths in the attempt to convince you that pigs might fly. He became CEO and Chairman of the ATP in November 2013 following the untimely death of his predecessor Brad Drewett, who prematurely passed away from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). On 7 March 2019, the ATP announced that Kermode’s contract would not be extended beyond the end of the year. An article from ESPN suggested this was the result of a “coup” orchestrated by Novak Djokovic. He had been a modest tennis player between 1985 and 1988 before becoming a coach and then being appointed Tournament Director at the Queen’s Club Championships. He was the Director of the ATP Finals in London between 2008 and 2014.
Despite being favoured by Federer and Nadal, Kermode was sidelined by the players led by Novak Djokovic and Vasek Pospisil who later founded the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA). Kermode admitted that “the creation of PTPA is the result of a lot of frustration. It often happens that Players Representatives in the ATP Council make proposals that are important for all the players, but tournaments do not agree and vote against the motion, with the result that nothing gets done. This gives the impression that players are not listened to, so they are using the word ‘independence’”.
During Kermode’s tenure, the ATP grew considerably from a financial standpoint: in 2014, his first year in charge, the total prize money for the Tour was slightly above $90 million; in 2018 it had increased to $139.4 million. However, he could benefit from a very favourable environment that his successor Gaudenzi did not find, as he had to deal with the unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic after just a few months in the driving seat.
