Lawler, Micky

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    Micky Lawler, a Longtime Tennis Executive, Turns to Basketball

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    She was a force at the WTA and is now the commissioner of Unrivaled, a new women’s basketball league.Micky Lawler knows a thing or two about starting over.As a child, Lawler, whose father was an executive with a Dutch electronics company, lived in seven countries: the Netherlands, where she was born, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Kenya, France and Belgium.But the move that impacted Lawler the most came when she was 24 and returning to the Netherlands after finishing graduate school in Delaware.“As the plane pushed back, I could see my friends, who had come to the airport to say goodbye, standing by the gate, and I realized that I would miss them much more than they would miss me,” Lawler, now 63, wrote in an email last month. “For me, this departure entailed closing a very important chapter and leaving behind everyone I held so dear.”Lawler felt the same chapter-closing emotions when her position as president of the Women’s Tennis Association was eliminated last December, months after the WTA announced its partnership with the venture capital firm CVC Capital Partners. That ended a 38-year career in tennis, during which Lawler was instrumental in overseeing the growth of tournaments, sponsorship, marketing and broadcast deals for the largest women’s sports entity.But Lawler has already moved on. In June, she was named commissioner of Unrivaled, a new women’s basketball league to debut next January.Unrivaled is designed to be a complement, not a competitor, to the W.N.B.A. It was founded by, among others, Breanna Stewart, the New York Liberty forward, and her United States Olympic teammate Napheesa Collier, a forward with the Minnesota Lynx. The league features three-on-three play on a court that is about 70-feet long, two-thirds the size of a traditional basketball court. Each hourlong game consists of four seven-minute quarters designed to attract the devotion of younger, goldfish-attention-span fans. Media rights deals are still being worked out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Despite the Trend in Sports, Don’t Expect Ashleigh Barty to Un-Retire

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      When the world’s top women’s tennis player won the Australian Open in January, it became her crowning achievement. Her stunning retirement is a loss to tennis.Tennis, with all its aging and ailing superstars, has been bracing for big farewells for years. But players like Roger Federer, Serena and Venus Williams and Andy Murray have defied the timeline and the expectations, pressing on and rejecting retirement through competitiveness, stubbornness, and a love of the game and the platform.Which is why Wednesday came as such a surprise.Ashleigh Barty, by these new-age standards, was just getting started. At 25, she was ranked No. 1 with three Grand Slam singles titles in the bank, including Wimbledon last year and the Australian Open in January. Already an icon at home, she had the beautiful game and winning personality to one day become a global brand as the majors and seasons piled up.But Barty was on her own timeline, and, after long and careful consideration, she is retiring on top, the very top, which might sound neat and tidy but actually requires the self-awareness and the guts to leave quite a few things unfinished.If Barty remains retired, she will never win a U.S. Open singles title, never win the Billie Jean King Cup team event for Australia, never win an Olympic gold medal, never, with her complete set of tennis tools, achieve the calendar-year Grand Slam that her Australian predecessors Rod Laver and Margaret Court won more than 50 years ago.Barty warmed up on court P4 at the start of the fifth day of the 2019 U.S. Open.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut there is more to a champion’s life than a checklist, and, as Federer and his enduring peer group would surely confirm, it is only worth making the trek to such low-oxygen destinations if you genuinely enjoy the journey.Barty, a teen prodigy who won the Wimbledon girls title at age 15, has long seemed like someone whose gift took her farther than she wanted to go.“I’m shocked and not shocked,” Rennae Stubbs, an Australian player, coach and ESPN analyst, said of Barty’s retirement. “Ash is not an ego-driven person wanting more. She’s happy and now comfortable and never has to leave her town and family again. And she’s content with her achievements now.”The journeys, it is true, are longer for Australians, and they had been isolated under some of the strictest lockdowns and quarantine rules in the world during the pandemic.Barty spent all of 2020 in Australia, opting to remain home in Brisbane rather than travel abroad to compete when tournaments resumed after a forced hiatus. She left the country for several months in 2021, cementing her No. 1 status by winning four titles, including Wimbledon. But after losing early in the U.S. Open, Barty, emotionally drained, returned to Australia and skipped the rest of the season.That might have been a hint that early retirement was a possibility; that balance and personal well-being were Barty’s priorities, all the more so with her financial future secure. But then came her return to competition in January, when she ended Australia’s 44-year-drought by winning the Australian Open singles title — without dropping a single set. After her forehand passing shot winner against the American Danielle Collins, she howled with delight.Barty supporters cheered as they watched her defeat Alison Riske during the 2020 Australian Open.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York TimesPerhaps, in retrospect, it was a scream of relief. What looked like her latest achievement turned out to be her crowning one. She did not pick up a racket again, even to practice, after winning the title in Melbourne. She pulled out of the prestigious hardcourt events in Indian Wells and Miami, and then retired on Wednesday, delivering the news in a prearranged conversation with her friend and former doubles partner Casey Dellacqua that was released on social media.“I don’t think Ash has ever been part of a current,” said Micky Lawler, the president of the Women’s Tennis Association, who spoke with Barty on Tuesday before her announcement. “This is not a new trend for her. I think she has always been very determined and very clear on where she stood and where tennis stood in her life.”That clarity has been hard-earned. Barty has matured and learned a great deal about herself through therapy and life experience since she stepped away from the tour and its pressures for the first time at age 17, depressed and homesick. Sports comebacks remain all the rage, as Tom Brady continues to make clear. Tennis stars of the past who retired early — see Justine Henin and Bjorn Borg — did eventually return to competition, however briefly. But the feeling in tennis circles is that another Barty comeback is against the odds.“I would guess that this is her final decision,” Lawler said. She added, “There would be a much bigger chance of her coming back if she lived in the States or in Europe. The fact she’s in Australia and loves Australia and loves being home, I think that plays a big role in how she decided this and when she decided this, and that will make a comeback that much harder.”Barty in action against Sofia Kenin in their semifinal singles match at the 2020 Australian Open.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York TimesLawler said that, in their conversation, Barty also made it clear that she did not want to continue placing travel demands on Craig Tyzzer, her veteran Australian coach.Lawler said she expects Barty to request to be removed from the rankings, likely before the end of the Miami Open, which concludes April 3. No. 2 Iga Swiatek of Poland could become No. 1 by winning her opening match in Miami, but if she loses, No. 6 Paula Badosa of Spain could also become No. 1 by winning the title.Though Swiatek, 20, and Badosa, 24, have powerful games and charisma, Barty’s departure leaves a void. Stylistically, her flowing, varied game was a refreshing change from the big-bang approach that has long prevailed. Barty, though she stood only 5-foot-5, had plenty of power and one of the most dominant serves — and forehands — in the game. But her success was also based on changes of pace, spin and tactics. She could hit over her backhand with two hands, or slice it with one hand and tremendous control, depth and bite.Her full package often bamboozled more one-dimensional opponents. Other young players possess similar variety, including Russia’s Daria Kasatkina and Canada’s Bianca Andreescu, who won the 2019 U.S. Open. But Barty was the most consistent and irresistible exemplar of variety. She was 3-0 in Grand Slam singles finals, although it bears remembering that she never faced a player ranked in the top 10 in any of the Grand Slam tournaments she won.Barty celebrated after she won her first Wimbledon title in 2021.Pool photo by Ben QueenboroughThat was no fault of her own, but her early departure will again make it challenging for the WTA to create what it has lacked for most of the last 20 years: the enduring, transcendent rivalries that have been the hallmarks of the men’s game in the age of Novak Djokovic, Federer and Rafael Nadal.Serena Williams, the greatest women’s player of this era, is 40 and has not played since injuring herself in the first round of Wimbledon last year. She may not play again. Naomi Osaka, her heir apparent in terms of global profile and commercial portfolio, has struggled with her mental health and is now ranked 77th. Emma Raducanu, the talented British teen who was a surprise U.S. Open champion last year, is a sponsor magnet but not yet ready to soar to the top.Perhaps Barty will take on other sporting challenges. During her first hiatus from tennis, she showed her potential to be a world-class cricketer, and she is an excellent golfer who is engaged to Garry Kissick, a professional golfer from Australia. Other women’s tennis stars have switched to professional golf, including Althea Gibson, but that move sounds unlikely given the global travel that sport also demands.The WTA clearly knows how to crown champions and do business without Barty. Despite finishing the season at No. 1 the last three years, she has not been a dominant presence there amid her long breaks from the sport. But however well-considered her departure, it is still sad for tennis that she did not want to carry the torch forward.Her character and game would have worn particularly well. More

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      WTA Finals, a Nomadic Tournament, Lands in Mexico

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      A last-minute deal brings the event to Guadalajara. But what about that altitude?After two decades of wandering the globe, the WTA Finals had finally found a home, or so it seemed in 2019.That was the first year the finals were held, to great fanfare, in Shenzhen, China, under a deal that would keep the tournament there for 10 years.The event has not been back since, and on Wednesday it will instead be played in Guadalajara, Mexico, after an agreement in September.The tournament, which has been played under different names over the years, has long been a bit nomadic. It was held at Madison Square Garden from 1979 to 2000 and has moved five times from 2001 to 2013. It then spent five years in Singapore.The pandemic forced the cancellation of last year’s tournament, the first time it had not been held since the finals began nearly 50 years ago, when the finals were called the Virginia Slims Championships.This year, with the Akron WTA Finals Guadalajara, that means some players will be competing in one of the biggest tournaments outside of the Grand Slams in the third different city in the last three finals.“I personally don’t care if the location changes every year; it’s always exciting to be able to compete in the event,” said Garbiñe Muguruza of Spain, who qualified three times from 2015 to 2017 and is one of the eight players invited to play singles this year.For months, the WTA planned a return to Shenzhen, while having parallel discussions with other cities, including Hong Kong.“Knowing the situation was less than clear, we had a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C,” said Micky Lawler, the WTA president. “We wanted to give our top players a chance to compete the way they deserved to end 2021, but putting on events is really tough during a pandemic, and circumstances keep changing and are out of your control.”The tour ended up going with Plan D: Guadalajara.“I personally don’t care if the location changes every year,” Garbiñe Muguruza said of the WTA Finals.Dean Lewins/EPA, via Shutterstock“It’s very difficult to plan an event at this scale, and they offered a great solution in a market where we already had a tournament,” Lawler said, referring to the lower-level tournament held there in March. (The No. 1 seed was 46th-ranked Nadia Podoroska of Argentina.)The WTA was impressed by the team that ran that tournament, but also there was no Plan E, Lawler said. “This wasn’t a situation of ‘Let’s choose between places,’” she said. “It was, ‘We don’t want a second year in a row without a WTA Finals, so let’s put all our resources together and make this work.’”Lawler said that Steve Simon, the WTA chief executive, was running weekly board meetings and that the tour held constant discussions with the players and the sponsors. “Everyone’s attitude was that this was not what we planned for, but they would support it because it was better than no tournament.”While Lawler is certain that there will be challenges — she points to a sudden Covid-related lockdown that started during a recent tournament in Moscow — she is confident that they will be surmountable. Many of the players are certainly eager for the tournament, even if there are obstacles. (The exception is Ashleigh Barty, the tour’s top-ranked player and the defending champion. She is skipping the tournament to avoid another stint in quarantine after returning to her native Australia.)Karolina Pliskova said reaching the WTA Finals was always a personal goal when the season started. This is her fifth straight year at the tournament, making her the only player besides Muguruza with experience in the event. The newcomers competing in singles are Paula Badosa, Anett Kontaveit, Barbora Krejcikova, Aryna Sabalenka, Maria Sakkari and Iga Swiatek.Pliskova, who is the only person to play in Singapore, Shenzhen and now Guadalajara over three consecutive WTA Finals, said the shift in locales erased some of her advantage.“It’s better for players who have never played in the tournament because if it was in the same place each year, players who had been there would know how the courts play and know all the activities and would feel more relaxed,” she said. “This year, everybody is basically starting from zero.”The biggest difference between Guadalajara and pretty much any other WTA Finals location is the altitude. The city is about 5,000 feet above sea level, which will make the ball fly faster but trickier to control, while also challenging players to catch their breath after long rallies.Guadalajara is about 5,000 feet above sea level, an altitude that will affect how the ball flies and how players breathe.Getty Images“The altitude is a salient factor, and it came up in conversations with the players, but everyone’s in the same boat,” Lawler said, adding that it is no different from having a surface that favors certain players. “These players are the best of the best, so while some will love it less, they’re going to adjust.”Krejcikova said that she had no experience playing at that altitude, but that she did not care about how it would change the game. “I’m just happy to be going to the WTA Finals,” she said. “I always wanted to play against the other top players to see where my level is.”She said that she believed that the bigger hitters and servers might benefit from getting extra velocity on their power shots, resulting in shorter points, but that she would not decide how to adjust her game until she practiced there.Muguruza said the strongest players might benefit from the altitude. But the extra velocity comes with a catch. “It will be the ones who can control their power who will have more opportunities,” she said, because balls could easily sail long or wide.Pliskova said she might change the tension on her strings to give her more control or more spin.“I don’t want to change too much — my game is my game — but I may change a little,” she said, adding that someone who was good at defending might benefit if players could not control their shots, as long as they were in good enough condition to handle long points at that altitude.Although the WTA hopes to return the finals to Shenzhen in 2022, there is hope that this rare visit from the game’s best players will give the sport a boost in Mexico. Heather Bowler, a spokeswoman for the International Tennis Federation, said in an email that at the recreational and amateur level Mexico had the lowest ratio in the region of players to population and the lowest percentage of female players.“Bringing an elite-level tournament, WTA Finals will drive awareness and increase an appetite for the game, so it certainly is a good basis on which to build on in the future,” she wrote, “and the WTA should be a great catalyst for sport in the region and for Mexico as a nation.”Lawler said that while nothing was in the works, increased interest could eventually lead to bigger tournaments and more resources for young players in the region, creating a positive cycle. “If there is an appetite to build something in Mexico, we would do everything we can to support it,” she said.Krejcikova said she thought about the way the sport and the players were seen by girls at every tournament, but especially when it was someplace new.“I hope we are good examples for them,” she said, “and can have a big impact on the younger generation in Mexico.” More