Friday, Feb. 24, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.
Next week's Tennis Channel Open at the Stacy and Amanda Darling Memorial Tennis Center has attracted two of the top-10 men's players in the world: Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt.
In addition to being a blessing, that development has presented tournament director Steve Bellamy with an unexpected problem - not having enough seats to accommodate every fan who likely will want to see the return of big-time tennis to Las Vegas.
"I'm a promoter of this sport so if I've ever got somebody who wants to come watch and can't because they can't get a ticket, that's just breaking my heart," Bellamy said of the open, which features both a 32-draw ATP International Series men's event and an International Tennis Federation women's tournament.
Bellamy, founder and president of The Tennis Channel and a former singer/ songwriter and tennis instructor, spent a few minutes with the Sun and talked about the Tennis Channel Open, which runs Monday through Sunday at the 40-acre tennis center in northwest Las Vegas.
I've traveled the world and I've seen pretty much every tennis facility there is to see and every kind of tournament and I think this is the most beautiful tennis facility for a tennis tournament on the entire tour. It is just stunning over there ... they did just a great job in building that facility and then what we've done to it - we've spent the most you can spend on tenting and structures and we spent a fortune on lighting. It looks like a cross between a tennis tournament, Lollapalooza and the nicest Academy Awards party.
Is that what you have to do in Las Vegas to make something like this successful?
There's so much entertainment here that you have to be big but, in general, wherever we moved the tournament, we were going to do something that was not just a tennis tournament; we wanted to make something that was just so much bigger and could draw on so many more aspects of life to get people to come out. The Tennis Channel, we're putting our own name on the thing so it's got to be the best.
What prompted you to move this tournament from Scottsdale to Las Vegas? Was the tournament struggling in Scottsdale?
No, the way they had the tournament there in Scottsdale, it was at a Princess Resort and it was a very nice tournament. I came in and said, "Look, we don't want to just do a nice tournament, we want to take that land over there and this land over here and we want to do X,Y and Z," and they came back and said, "No, we don't want that." We tried to make it work with them and ... I had a vision and they just didn't want to make their facility appropriate for my vision.
I shoot for the moon when I shoot at things. I started a whole television network. I just didn't say, "Hey, I think I'm going to get into the TV business and I'm going to try to make a show," I started an entire network. The same thing with the tennis tournament; I didn't just want to come in and do what we have 60 other around the world of. I want to do something that the players all went "Wow" and fans all went "Wow" and people wanted to come there. There are 60 tennis tournaments around the world and I don't want to be just 61.
What is your long-term vision for the Tennis Channel Open in Las Vegas?
A. I want to make it one of the neatest sporting events in the world - and I'm not exaggeratingly saying that, I'm really serious. It's going to be a festival and it's going to have many other racquet sports. Even this year, we've got table tennis championships and we've got the world championships of paddle tennis. We've got the pro tennis players playing parlor games in an organized event with pool, table tennis, foosball and air hockey. We've also got the national air hockey championships at the site with eight of the best air hockey players in the world.
In other forms of entertainment, like Lollapalooza or Woodstock, they didn't just have a concert with one band. I've got over 250 athletes coming to Las Vegas when you include all the sports. My event is a lot like the Olympics: They take a lot of stuff that; maybe on its own it's not that gigantic, but you throw it together and all of a sudden you've built a very neat sports property.
How have advance ticket sales been going?
We are already well over 200 percent above where the Scottsdale event was for the entire year - and we still have ... a whole week of walk-up (sales). The terrible part is that when we designed the event, we did not design it to have Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick, James Blake - all these big stars. We designed it for more what the Scottsdale tournament was used to, which was (players such as) Vince Spadea, who won it last year, and Wayne Arthurs, who has won it.
The player field this year is twice as good as it was last year and we have a 3,500-seat stadium so it's just unfortunate that there are not a lot of tickets.
Is it possible to expand the seating capacity of the stadium for future events?
Oh, yes. The stadium is very ripe for expansion in future years. This year is going to be tough because there certainly are going to be a lot of people who don't get tickets.
It sounds like things couldn't be going any better.
A. Things are going great. The site just looks absolutely stunning and the weather report looks pretty good. Next year, our aspirations are huge. We're going to have the world's biggest tennis tournament next year that's going to have tens of thousands of people that will play all over the country and they will all feed into Las Vegas. We'll have this big, mammoth draw the week before where probably 128 people all play for a chance to get into the main draw of the tournament and we're going to film it (for The Tennis Channel) and we're going to make it like an "American Idol" type of thing. It's going to be cool.
That sounds ambitious.
There's nothing like Vegas and we're bringing in an event that's nothing like any other event.
Brian Hilderbrand can be reached at 259-4089 or at [email protected].
archive
