Melissa Bailey Photo
Anne Worcester, John DeStefano, Jr., Rick Levin, and Marna Borgstrom announcing that pro tennis will remain in New Haven.
A deadline was passing for New Haven to rescue its annual tennis tournament. Yale’s Rick Levin picked up the phone.
Levin (second from right in photo above) called friends at two corporations, Aetna and American Express.
He told them they had “a great opportunity” for “terrific media exposure and community relations” by helping New Haven’s tennis tournament survive to its 20th year, Levin said.
On Thursday, about a month after making that pitch, he shared the stage with representatives from those companies to make a joint announcement: New Haven’s signature summer tennis tournament will survive after all.
What was previously known as the Pilot Pen Tennis Tournament will live on under a new name: The New Haven Open At Yale, announced tournament director Anne Worcester at a press event at the media center at the Connecticut Tennis Center in Westville. The four sponsors are Yale, Yale-New Haven Hospital, Aetna and American Express.
Worcester called the new arrangement an “out-of-the ‑box, good news solution” to keeping the tournament going. With those four sponsors’ support, the tournament will survive for at least the next three years, she said.
The move will take the tournament “back to its roots” as a women-only event, dropping the men’s component, Worcester said. She said the tournament will retain a small draw of about 30 players so that the players have to clear only a few rounds to win, and will still have energy to compete in the U.S. Open the following week.
Her announcement capped a months-long campaign to replace Pilot Pen. After sponsoring the event for 15 years, the company announced last November it would end its sponsorship after 2010, leaving tournament director scrambling to find a replacement. As the pros and fans gathered for the games this summer, Worcester worked on the sidelines, using New Haven cuisine as a lure to court nine companies to come to the tournament’s rescue.
She was working on a Sept. 30 deadline to tell the United States Tennis Association (USTA) whether or not the event would continue. The tournament leases the event each year from the USTA. Worcester said as of Sept. 20, she knew the event would be reorganized as a women-only tournament, with four main sponsors instead of one. She asked for an extension until Oct. 8 to pull together the sponsors.
Worcester (pictured) said at the time, she had commitments from Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital. She needed two more. That’s when Levin stepped up to the service line.
Levin said he had contacts at Aetna and American Express, and made some phone calls. He made the case that the companies would not only get exposure from signage at the tournament, but an opportunity to help New Haven kids.
The success in recruiting new sponsors means that not only professional tennis, but grassroots tennis, too, will continue thriving on New Haven courts.
The tournament is the main marketing branch and recruiter for the city parks department’s affordable tennis program. It helps draw gifts and grants to the program, exposes urban kids to tennis, and gives kids the chance to get free lessons with the pros.
The pitch hit home for Aetna, reported Floyd W. Green III, Aetna’s head of community relations and urban marketing. He said the company will be the primary sponsor of kid-related tournament events. The Hartford-based health insurance company will use the opportunity to tie in lessons in health, especially racial disparities in access to health care.
American Express, based in New York City, is a longtime sponsor of USTA and the U.S. Open, and agreed to extend its support up the I‑95 corridor.
Why did Levin make the effort?
“We’re invested in keeping New Haven strong,” he replied. Yale has been a smaller sponsor of the tournament since the beginning. “We think this does good things for the economy, and great things for the image of New Haven, nationally and internationally.”
The sponsors have not only saved the tennis tournament for New Haven, “we saved Anne Worcester for New Haven,” he added. “The energy that this woman has put into saving this tournament in New Haven is unmatched.”
Yale-New Haven Hospital’s CEO Marna Borgstrom echoed those remarks. “It really is impossible to say no to Anne Worcester,” she said.
The tournament did not disclose how much money was raised. Worcester said only that the “financial nut” is in place, and all that’s left is to recruit smaller sponsors and sell tickets. Originally she was seeking a single corporate title sponsor to replace Pilot Pen and cover a quarter of the tournament’s $4.5 million annual cost. (The rest of the money comes from smaller sponsors and ticket revenues.)
Mayor John DeStefano (at left in photo, with Levin), who built the tennis center in the early ‘90s during a four-year exile from city government, welcomed the good news.
He noted that in his 17 years as mayor, he has presided over the demise of three hockey clubs and two baseball teams.
Why has the tennis tournament survived?
“I think it’s because this event is connected with the city and the region and the state in a powerful fashion.” Worcester and her staff “have really created the sense that this is our thing,” he said, pounding the podium for emphasis. “We’re going to fight to keep it here because it has value” to the city and local economy. Worcester claims the tournament pours $26 million into the local economy, including business for hotels and restaurants.
“This wasn’t about saving a tennis tournament,” DeStefano said. “It is about what makes New Haven New Haven — authentic, different and unique.”
The city has long supported the tournament; its current budget allocates $135,000 in taxpayer money toward the tournament. DeStefano said he has been part of periodic press conferences called to save the tournament’s subsidy from getting cut from the city budget. Four members of the Board of Aldermen, which annually approves a subsidy, were present at Thursday’s event.
Downtown Alderwoman Bitsie Clark called the tournament’s survival “tremendous news.” She said she supports continuing paying for the tournament, and she predicted most of her colleagues would as well.
Having two local institutions — the city’s two largest employers — step up as major sponsors is “such an affirmation by the community” of the event, she said. “How can members representing the community not also step up and support” the tournament?
Out in the hallway, John Pirtel, director of the city’s youth tennis program, breathed a sigh of relief. He said the success of the city’s tennis program is contingent on the tournament’s survival. The Tennis Foundation of Connecticut, the not-for-profit group that runs the tennis center, funds an annual indoor tennis program that serves 250 city kids, Pirtel said. If the tournament ceased to exist, he predicted, “our winter tennis would have been squashed.”
The city’s fast-expanding tennis program “would have taken 20 steps backward,” he said. Now, he said, with more local sponsors supporting the event, “it’s only going to make our program better.”
Congratulations! And special thanks to John Pirtel--his tireless efforts to introduce kids to tennis and cultivate talent, leadership and the competitive spirit make him a real New Haven treasure.