EP 10 - Secrets of Success: Diving into the Atlanta Open with Eddie Gonzalez

Gerard (00:11): Welcome back to Spin the Racket, the recreational tennis pod covering everything from the pro tour to the everyday league player. I'm your boy G.

Spin The Racket (00:20): And I'm

Gerard (00:22): Today we have Eddie Gonzalez joining us on the pod. Eddie has had a huge impact on tennis in Atlanta and around the country and served as a director of the ATP 250 Atlanta Open from 2013 to 2022. Eddie, welcome to the show.

Eddie Gonzalez (00:38): Happy to be here guys. Thanks for having me.

Gerard (00:40): Of course, of course. First question that we always ask every guest on the pod, would you rather have no serve or no forehand?

Eddie Gonzalez (00:51): No forehand. Serving is 50 % of the game. So you can win a lot of matches with a serve.

Gerard (00:59): That's right.

Spin The Racket (01:01): We've had

Eddie Gonzalez (01:21): Well, I'm also left handed, so the serve is a huge advantage. It's

Spin The Racket (01:27): ⁓

Gerard (01:29): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (01:40): That's a no-brainer then. That's a no-brainer.

Gerard (01:43): I love it. I love it. I know you've played tennis, it looks like, for very long time. know, I think we saw that you played junior tennis and played in college. Talk to us about your background there. How did you first get started?

Eddie Gonzalez (01:57): Well, I'm a local boy. I I grew up in Rome, Georgia and kind of got introduced to tennis at 11, kind of gave everything else up at 14 or 15 to focus on tennis and kind of outgrew Rome, Georgia, unfortunately, because I love Rome and Floyd County. That's still home in a lot of ways.

Spin The Racket (02:15): you

Eddie Gonzalez (02:21): But I was blessed to then be able to go to ⁓ Baylor School in 10th grade. That is a prep boarding school in Chattanooga with a long history of great tennis tradition. And I'd say Baylor and McCauley are the top two high school tennis programs in the country, I would say. And that's not even arguably, I think that's factually. But that helped me a lot being able to then go away and get academics and athletics. And then I was able to get a scholarship to play in the ACC.

Gerard (03:18): you

Eddie Gonzalez (03:18): And luckily

Spin The Racket (03:36): I gotta say it was a really good experience. I moved to Atlanta about three years ago and I got to go to the last two editions of it and ⁓ it's one of the best, let's just say entertainment places that I've ever been in my life. Obviously being a tennis fan, like you're going to enjoy tennis, but the fact that the tournament felt so...

Eddie Gonzalez (05:05): Well, I'll just go back to Atlanta open for a minute. Thank you for the nice compliment. mean, as a team, you know, really our objective there was our motto was we want people to come.

Spin The Racket (05:20): Yeah. Right.

Eddie Gonzalez (05:47): the

Gerard (05:53): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (06:02): you

Gerard (06:04): you

Eddie Gonzalez (06:17): the ACC or the SEC or you know the Pac-10 back then were just a great stepping stone to play pro tennis but I can remember our head coach who had played the tour Crawford Henry who is in the Southern Tennis Hall of Fame left it up to us to go to the workout room. That was up to us and ⁓

Gerard (06:57): Mm-hmm.

Spin The Racket (07:08): you

Eddie Gonzalez (07:08): up at 6 a.m. to go hit

Spin The Racket (07:47): You think that's like lowered the gap, right? Become less of a stepping stone for players, ⁓ you know, with pro aspirations?

Eddie Gonzalez (07:58): No, because I think the quality of the play has actually gotten better. There's there's a, and no, I think that we've seen that. ⁓

Spin The Racket (09:19): That's why we're seeing that it's becoming, you know, obviously you can't associate it to like, you know, playing D110 is probably not indicative of, you know, success on tour, but it ⁓ sounds like it's preparing ⁓ the young players much better than it was, you know, back in the day, right?

Eddie Gonzalez (09:19): for more players than less.

Gerard (10:34): Mm Yeah, that's a great example. And I have to echo what Louie said about the Atlanta Open. mean, incredible tournament. I moved to Atlanta in 2012 and I went every single year and it was was such a highlight. actually volunteered for a few years as an usher, met some other friends through that experience too.

Eddie Gonzalez (10:52): Thank you. Appreciate it.

Gerard (10:54): Absolutely. And as we talk about this, you know, D1 college tennis, I remember the college tennis night being a core piece of the Atlanta Open too, having wild cards for local players. Like, talk to us about that. Was that something that was intentional because you were trying to support D1 tennis and show how good it is from a leveling perspective?

Spin The Racket (10:57): you

Eddie Gonzalez (11:17): 100%, 100%. I'm a big believer that pro sports can be such a motivation for our youth to dream and to dream big. And I don't care if it's basketball, baseball, football, tennis. ⁓

Spin The Racket (11:31): .

Eddie Gonzalez (11:31): And that's why, again, we would have kids days where kids could get in for free with a paid adult. ⁓ Cuz we wanted kids to be there and to dream. And whether they are on the ball kids team and they're close to the action, that motivates them to play high school or college or maybe even one day pro. And I think college tennis is a great pathway. And we were the only tournament in the world that was doing a college night in which we gave a wild card to a player from the area. Georgia and Georgia Tech, but you know what we also gave

Gerard (12:27): Yep.

Eddie Gonzalez (12:31): junior career. Got to college, developed some, was having some success, but once he got the wild card into Atlanta and one year he had a win over Taylor Fritz and he also had a win over Gerald Donaldson who was top 50. He got to a quarterfinals where he lost to Ryan Harrison, but I'm very...

Gerard (13:12): I love it. And I know, as we talked about earlier in the show, you're someone who's been a part of tennis in many different chapters and in different perspectives. I know you worked for the USTA at some point in your career as well. How do you view the impact and importance or even kind of

Eddie Gonzalez (13:52): Well, we're very blessed to live in Atlanta that people will say is the number one tennis city in the world. And I've been blessed to travel to a lot of cities around the world. People will always ask me who play tennis. Hey, Atlanta, we've heard so much about it. Well, we're blessed because we have great weather.

Gerard (14:07): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (14:11): blessed because we've got ALTA and USTA that allows us to play year-round. You play ALTA in the spring and the fall and you play USTA summer winter and putting on my again tournament director hat with the ATP Tour and the Atlanta Open, the first two people I sat down with when I ⁓ became the tournament director was ALTA and USTA leadership because pro tennis event in any market

Gerard (14:42): Right.

Spin The Racket (14:55): That's right.

Eddie Gonzalez (15:01): great relationships with ALTA and USTA. And that's why, again, I I

Spin The Racket (15:06): you

Eddie Gonzalez (15:07): still play. I still play ALTA and USTA. So I'm on an ALTA team and I still play USTA events. And I think the role in any community has to involve that local community tennis association. In my hometown of Rome, Georgia, the Cusa Valley Tennis Association plays a key role in that community.

Gerard (15:11): Yep.

Eddie Gonzalez (15:29): and without it, it's tougher because then you don't have, whether it's junior team tennis or NJ National Junior Tennis League or adult leagues. mean, as a kid, I was playing in adult leagues and you know, at 12, 13, 14 years old, because that's how I could get matches and the adults were very welcoming to me. So it's pivotal for ALTA USTA in Atlanta to continue to offer programs that

Gerard (15:45): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (15:59): ⁓ really provide playing opportunities.

Gerard (16:03): Yeah. Well, we might have to recruit you to our ALTA team at some point. We're low on players and can use a big lefty serve like yours.

Eddie Gonzalez (16:11): Alright.

Spin The Racket (16:14): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (16:33): This time of year, the fall is a little tougher with college football. can tell you that nobody wants to go head to head with the SEC or the ACC. And here in Atlanta with Georgia and Georgia Tech, I Georgia Tech's undefeated this year. so, yeah, Saturdays get tough to, ⁓ so across all levels of ALTA.

Spin The Racket (16:33): pretty pretty hot Saturday. Now what

Gerard (16:39): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (16:52): Well, yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (17:18): Congrats, brother.

Spin The Racket (17:21): You have an ⁓ interesting perspective and I'm curious to hear from you on like, you know, we talked about the Atlanta Open being this party for you. And at the end of the day, you know, my perspective is that in order to encourage the new generation and to increase the amount of tennis players that we have generation over generation, we have to keep tennis relevant, right? We have to keep the sport.

Eddie Gonzalez (18:15): One point, yeah. Yeah.

Spin The Racket (18:18): situation. What's your take on that?

Eddie Gonzalez (18:23): think any industry has to continue to reinvent itself. We don't go around on horse and buggy anymore. So ⁓ we have to continue to reinvent ourselves. And I've always been a big proponent for.

Spin The Racket (18:30): you

Eddie Gonzalez (18:39): Some people don't like the word disruption or disruptor, but sometimes disruption is good. when I, I'm proud of the fact that some things that we did during the Atlanta Open were offering the ATP tour to be a guinea pig for using the electronic line calling. I thought it was kind of interesting that you got two players playing, but you had seven people on the court calling lines for two people, plus the chair umpire. I, ⁓ now look, there's a role for the officials.

Gerard (19:05): you

Eddie Gonzalez (19:09): and officials are needed, but if we have the technology, we need to embrace it. And so, you know, we were an early adapter to that. We showed that it works. We also were an early adapter to using the digital signage around the court. I mean, that's pretty standard at the NBA, but tennis is very traditional about just having that static logo signage. It's like, why would we not have a digital back wall?

Gerard (19:32): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (19:36): So we were the first tournament United States to actually use digital signage and proud of the fact that even the US Open kind of followed our suit with that. Now it's now that's become much more commonplace. you know, I think that the doubles being a two out of three with a, you know, a 10 point match tiebreak on the ATP tour is a good thing. I think what the US Open did with the mixed doubles is a good thing.

Gerard (19:45): That's cool.

Eddie Gonzalez (20:04): and I mean, the stands were packed. have, you created content even before the show started, you know, with the main attraction, with the main draw. And so you've been able to expand the footprint for that event. And you look, Australian Open one point challenge may fall flat on its face. We don't know, but you know what? Kudos to them for trying. And so as we relate that to...

Gerard (20:15): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (20:34): to community tennis, we should continue to explore. Maybe there's more junior team events where kind of, you know, the boys and the girls are playing together instead of maybe they're struggling in a smaller community to get enough boys or girls to have separate teams and you combine. Use the example of Douglasville. I mean, maybe is there a way that there could have been different scoring or could both teams agree to play on

Spin The Racket (21:06): you

Gerard (21:07): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (21:30): a dear friend and you know, and he's involved in that. again, unless we try it, we don't know.

Gerard (21:30): Yeah, we did.

Spin The Racket (21:38): Wow. You, you

Eddie Gonzalez (22:02): Again, fresh concept, opportunity to be a disruptor. ⁓ I'm glad that they're ⁓ in the marketplace and trying to expand. And so I wish them a lot of luck. I think the challenge for them is still having players that fans can identify with. mean, look, with the ATP Tour in Atlanta, we knew that we were never gonna get Federer or Nadal or Djokovic. That was a given. We just weren't where we were on the calendar. So.

Spin The Racket (22:50): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (22:57): name players that people can identify with, I think that would bode well for them. But I love the energy. I was able to go to one or two of their events and it was a great production.

Gerard (23:11): Yeah, I had a chance to go to one this year too, and it was really fun. It was so different just, I don't know, being out there and hearing people just cheer whenever and blow whistles and yell and stuff. was like, wait a minute, what's going on? But it made for a really cool atmosphere. I think people enjoyed themselves.

Eddie Gonzalez (23:30): And going back to Atlanta open again, you were an usher a couple of years. I told our usher team, we wanted it to be a compliment if the chair and umpire had to say quiet, please. Cause we wanted people to be, you know, to me, I think it's silly that you can't get up and go to get something to eat or drink or come back to your seat. Cause you have to go to the restroom. We changed that unless you're sitting right behind the court. We told our ushers and fans, you can come and go on the sides or on the, you know, above, but right behind play, I get it. So.

Gerard (23:40): Yep.

Eddie Gonzalez (23:59): Again, small little example of just trying to do what's right so a better experience. And when you do have a better experience, that's going to help grow your event.

Gerard (24:10): Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Spin The Racket (24:11): Yeah, Jay, why

Gerard (24:43): Absolutely. Well, I'd love to, of course, make sure we dig into the Atlanta Open. Very curious to ask you some questions here. You ran it for close to 10 years. When you took it over in 2013, what was your initial vision for the tournament? Where did you see it going? How did you go about executing on that?

Spin The Racket (24:59): you

Eddie Gonzalez (25:05): Well, I was blessed in my career and I was in sports on the sales and marketing side for years and I was blessed to be able to go to ⁓ Super Bowls and Final Fours and Pro Bowls and Augusta, the Masters. But I tell people I feel like the greatest annual sporting event is the US Open tennis.

Spin The Racket (26:07): you

Eddie Gonzalez (26:08): and Venus Williams and my last year having Coco Gauff so now we really were that many years. So my vision was ⁓ I wanted to be that mini US Open.

Gerard (26:43): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (26:51): an example there, but it was a lot of fun. It was a great run.

Gerard (26:57): That's awesome. What kind of took place to get to that point? Like, you can give us a little bit of a history lesson or kind of back in that period, in terms of getting the tournament to Atlanta and starting something like this, a 250, do you have an idea of kind of what it took to even get to that point?

Eddie Gonzalez (27:17): Well, you know, we, our event took place every year on an empty parking lot, you know, and it's a, that site is used for events like Cirque du Soleil that comes in or food and wine festivals. And we would come in and we build this beautiful tennis center.

Gerard (27:52): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (28:04): in the night, was an instant breeze that would come through there. ⁓ so it's not necessarily one thing, but it was making sure that we made everybody feel like they were the most important.

Spin The Racket (28:05): Very nice.

Eddie Gonzalez (28:16): We wanted the players to come in and feel like they are the most important. And when you have great relationships with the players and the players talk and they're like, man, Atlanta, the food's great. The practice courts are readily available, plenty of restaurant, they talk. And then, you want the volunteers. mean, again, George, we wanted that volunteer experience to be as good and as fun as possible. And there's certain tournaments that would charge volunteers for the uniforms or for food. We didn't wanna do that.

Gerard (28:40): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (28:46): got nice uniforms, got food, got the ability to use tickets when they weren't working and...

Gerard (29:09): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (29:23): And so we got we got pretty good at that

Gerard (29:27): Yeah,

Spin The Racket (29:28): How about the experience?

Eddie Gonzalez (29:41): Well, from a corporate partnership, I have to put ALTA USTA in there, as I mentioned earlier, because if you don't have the support of the local community, you're not going to be successful. And they were all in with us, and we were all in with them.

Gerard (30:11): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (30:28): point that they would say that look we didn't choose ⁓ tennis, tennis chose us. I mean we knew it was easy for them so corporate side BB &T was such a great partner and then back to ALTA USTA I mean we would you know we would play one of the divisions mixed doubles finals on our site and so that way again

Gerard (30:35): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (30:51): You could be

Gerard (31:17): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (31:21): We did a lot to try to ⁓ help support the organizations that were supporting us.

Gerard (31:29): Makes a lot of sense. So take us tactically here. So obviously, the tournament was in July. How much time are you putting into planning and logistics and everything up until the tournament starts? Like, is it start beginning of the year? Do you start three months before the tournament? Is it all the time? Like, help us understand that.

Spin The Racket (31:49): Yeah, the moment

Eddie Gonzalez (31:54): We would start planning the following year, the first day of the tournament from the previous year. Just because again, you're already learning about things that worked or didn't work.

Gerard (32:13): Yep.

Spin The Racket (32:17): You

Eddie Gonzalez (32:36): I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah.

Gerard (32:41): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (32:44): But it's a year round. Look, it's year round. mean,

Gerard (32:55): Okay.

Eddie Gonzalez (32:55): of a post-event volunteer appreciation party, would have a sponsor retreat in the fall. You got to start to your renewals of sponsors, you know, immediately. And who are you entertaining at the tournament, who you're trying to get to come on board for the next year. So, some people would joke, Eddie, you know, what do you do the 51 weeks outside of the tennis tournament? Well, people don't understand that it's, and again, you're talking about building a beautiful tennis facility.

Gerard (33:12): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (33:25): tennis stadium and then tearing it down. And you got to hand it back over to Atlantic Station with that site perfectly clean so that Cirque du Soleil can come in behind us, you know? So it was a year-round endeavor for sure. And we had year-round offices right there Atlantic Station. So we were in that Atlantic Station community, 365.

Gerard (33:28): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (33:48): What was the

Eddie Gonzalez (34:10): Well, we could probably spend a whole ⁓ podcast episode on that, whether it was, you know, having some sweets that you find out maybe there was some leakage issues, you know, in there. ⁓ So, ⁓ you know, how do you problem solve? And that's what I tell people. says, look, the week of the term and all I'm doing is I'm problem solving and I'm problem solving fast. ⁓ But, ⁓ but again, you learn if you're going to add a VIP area, like we people, like if you add air conditioning,

Spin The Racket (34:20): Gosh.

Gerard (34:30): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (34:39): I will pay for it. And so we added a stadium club with air conditioning. How many tables or seats can you add there to make the math work so that what you're spending on that air conditioning in this new VIP area, and the first year we did it, we're lucky that Cigna, the health insurance company, wanted to put their name on it. So it was the Cigna Stadium Club, and that helped ease the financial pressure when you had a partner who wanted to put their name on it, it would help cover the cost, and then...

Gerard (34:41): Okay.

Eddie Gonzalez (35:08): How many tables could we put in there and selling those for $10,000 a pop for the week? Because that's not a small check, but a company who can use that table all week to entertain folks, that was really, from a lot of their perspective, kind of a small investment. And here they were in air conditioning right behind the court. So that's just one small example. Where do you put the player holding area? I mentioned the security. We learned how to, you know,

Gerard (35:12): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (35:36): create the entrance so that it was, because one year it was a debacle at the entrance when I think the first year that we had ⁓ Venus, Venus and Jeanne Bouchard play ⁓ because there was an issue right off the interstate. So traffic got backed up and everybody kind of was arriving at the same time. So you just learn on those things and you make improvements and enhancements and you move on.

Gerard (36:04): Yeah, I can imagine just a week of your probably running around like your hair is on fire and everything. Sounds a little stressful.

Spin The Racket (36:10): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (36:12): I'm glad I don't wear one of those whoops or Apple watches because I know

Spin The Racket (36:17): ⁓ Lord.

Gerard (36:19): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (36:27): Yeah, you feel like you were phasing through walls, just moving so quick. Where's Eddie? I don't know. He was just here a second ago.

Gerard (36:27): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (36:32): Yeah. Yeah.

Gerard (36:32): That's funny.

Eddie Gonzalez (36:59): Well, Nick's a good example because Nick is still to this day a ⁓ well-known commodity in tennis. if and when he plays, he's usually the feature match at night just because he's and tennis needs people like him that are polarizing. You know, he's the he's the New York Yankees or the New England Patriots. You you either love him or you hate him, you know, and so but he's great for the sport and he was great for Atlanta and Nick and I had and have a wonderful relationship.

Gerard (37:21): Exactly.

Eddie Gonzalez (37:29): And Nick, out of all the years he played, we never paid him an appearance fee because money wasn't important to him. It was more about being comfortable. again, going back to Luis, you're intimate. He loved the intimacy. He loved how everything was so easy here. And the best story for Nick is that, you know, the year he lost in the finals of Wimbledon to Djokovic, he was scheduled to come to Atlanta.

Gerard (37:37): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (37:57): Usually if you go deep at Wimbledon, your body needs to rest and you pull out of Atlanta or DC or whatever the next event is. And that's just, we accepted that, we get it. Well, Nick got to the finals of Wimbledon and he came to Atlanta. Now he ended up having to pull out of the singles that year because he still was having ⁓ some knee issues that were legit.

Gerard (38:06): Right.

Eddie Gonzalez (38:24): And he came to me distraught telling me that he was going to pull out. And I said, Nick, you're good. We're good. And I said, because you have, you have more to accomplish in tennis in Atlanta. You've got other majors and what have you. And I said, so hopefully you're back next year. says, well, I'm going to wait to see if my physio tells me I'm okay to play doubles. I'll know tomorrow. Well, he played doubles and he and Coconakis won the doubles.

Gerard (38:25): Right.

Spin The Racket (38:51): I was at that final. was at that

Eddie Gonzalez (39:01): Yeah, Nick

Gerard (39:20): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (39:21): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (39:28): but he was so comfortable. wanted to, and that's what we were trying to create. It was a determined that they didn't need to play, but they wanted to play. And by going back to those things that I said about just having the hotel and the food and the practice courts and the great restaurants, and we have some great restaurants in Atlanta with some tennis folks. And I'll give a shout out to my friend, Far Sheed at Umi or Marco Betty at Antica Posta when...

Gerard (39:28): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (39:55): Yannick Sinner. Yannick Sinner came here in 2021 and lost first round in singles. And he lost to O'Connell from Canada or Australia. And then, but he was signed up to play doubles with Riley Opelka. And Riley is one of the most outspoken critics of doubles on the tour. But Riley played doubles with Sinner and they won the doubles.

Gerard (40:01): Thank you.

Spin The Racket (40:07): Australia, right? Yeah.

Gerard (40:18): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (40:25): in 2021. But Yannick Sinner gave a lot of shout out during the award ceremony to Marco Betty, who owns Antica Posta in Buckhead, because he said that was the most authentic Italian restaurant he's ever had outside of Italy. so having Umi as a great restaurant partner or Marco and Antica Posta. again, Yannick Sinner will probably never win another doubles title on tour because he'll probably never play doubles again because he's such a singles guy now.

Gerard (40:25): No way.

Eddie Gonzalez (40:54): So it's pretty

Gerard (40:55): Yep.

Spin The Racket (40:55): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (40:55): cool that the one doubles tournament he won was with Opelka here in Atlanta.

Spin The Racket (41:00): I can, I can attest, I can attest to the quality of Antigua Post. I've actually had a, I think it was a ⁓ wedding anniversary dinner there. One of my best friends is from Italy and same thing. He was like, you need to go to this place. It's legit.

Gerard (41:00): That is pretty cool.

Spin The Racket (41:15): And so I took the wife there ⁓ for dinner. is extremely good and it's very intimate too.

Eddie Gonzalez (41:20): He always has TV.

Gerard (41:28): Sure.

Spin The Racket (41:35): That's perfect.

Gerard (41:43): That's

Eddie Gonzalez (42:11): You know, I mean, again, we didn't, the secret sauce for us was we had such a great venue partner, Atlantic Station. We're right in the heart of Midtown Atlanta. I mean, you couldn't ask for a better venue.

Spin The Racket (43:02): Get the FOMO, yeah.

Gerard (43:02): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (43:14): an hour to Douglasville. mean, you know, so it's just and nothing against Douglasville. I'm just using as examples. And you talked about having to drive there for tenants, but it was just so easy. We had the covered parking spaces and there's so many ways to get in and out of Atlantic Station. ⁓ So that was, that's what I would tell any event.

Gerard (43:17): Thank

Spin The Racket (44:05): We need, we need closure. Yeah,

Eddie Gonzalez (44:10): Yeah, look, Atlanta was very successful for all the reasons that I mentioned and financially as well. ⁓

Gerard (44:56): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (45:08): and they can be very successful and very important in the ecosystem of protests. But I think it's gonna be very difficult for Atlanta to get an ATP or WTA event back for a while just because the dates on the calendar.

Gerard (45:36): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (45:58): spring is tough in Atlanta because the weather is actually even more unpredictable. And when and where are going to do it? And again, the flip side is you could maybe play or matches are enjoyable during the day, but in the evenings it can get cold and windy and rainy and there's school and you know, so and that's so it's going to be it's going to be tough. There's an exhibition that's coming, you know, December that I

Spin The Racket (46:00): Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Gerard (46:12): Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Spin The Racket (46:23): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (46:26): don't know a lot about, but I did, just to give you kind of a life update, I am helping with the one in Madison Square Garden in New York City. So a friend has a relationship there with the garden and Jerry Solomon, who's a long time Yvonne Lindell agent and a long time tennis icon, kind of recruited me to help. And I said, you know what, Jerry, for a one night event,

Gerard (46:37): wow.

Eddie Gonzalez (46:53): in December at Madison Square Garden, I'll do it. And so it's been fun kind of staying involved. Nintendo's helping with that. We've got world number one, Arena Sabalenka playing against four time Grand Slam champion, Naomi Osaka.

Gerard (46:58): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (47:10): And then

Gerard (47:15): Yeah, nice.

Eddie Gonzalez (47:39): But that's going to be fun because we're partnering with the International Tennis Hall of Fame. That's our charity partner there. Of course, Sharapova and the Bryan Brothers just went in this past year. It's probably 99 % likely that Roger's going to go in next year or maybe even with Del Potro. So there's some fun things we can do there. We can help raise money for the International Tennis Hall of Fame. so that's been fun. So maybe a podcast.

Gerard (47:55): Cool.

Spin The Racket (48:09): That's awesome.

Eddie Gonzalez (48:09): from the garden December 8th.

Gerard (48:11): Yeah,

Spin The Racket (48:13): that'd be fantastic. So help me here. I did see the advertisement for that event and for the Atlanta Exhibition kind of around the same time. Are those two events not related? Wow. OK.

Eddie Gonzalez (48:26): No, none of the exhibitions are related, again, I think there's, and I've kind of voiced my opinion to each of the entities that there should be some ⁓ alignment.

Spin The Racket (48:38): Right. Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (48:39): because you have some efficiencies and economies of scale, but the Atlanta

Spin The Racket (48:57): Right.

Eddie Gonzalez (49:04): frees up the players to do it. And they're looking for matches at that point before they head down under. And that's where we made a conscious effort to reach out to Dunlop as our official ball and racket partner because Dunlop is the official ball the Australian Open. And you probably heard there's criticism from players about what ball, they're using different balls every week. we wanted to.

Gerard (49:37): Mm-hmm.

Spin The Racket (49:40): Consistent.

Gerard (50:06): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (50:31): I don't know if you've heard, but the ATP tours actually made a decision that the spring through the Americas is going to be Dunlop. And so all the terms where we're using the Dunlop ball. then when you go to Europe.

Spin The Racket (50:40): Okay.

Gerard (50:40): ⁓ interesting.

Eddie Gonzalez (50:46): don't wanna say which brand it is, cause I don't remember, but like Europe has a different ball. So three different ball manufacturers are all official ATP Tour balls with Dunlop being to the Americas. I think it might be Wilson through Europe. And then I think it was maybe Babylon through the Asia swing. But I could have those brands mixed up, that was,

Spin The Racket (51:09): Mixed up.

Eddie Gonzalez (51:11): but because of what you just said and that there was an opportunity to try to make sure.

Spin The Racket (51:20): That's nice. Yeah,

Eddie Gonzalez (52:04): I think the ball would be at the bottom of the list. I think that the equipment, think the strings, I think the surface, and I think the physical nature of the players now have had more to do with it than the ball. The ball may play a little bit of a factor. Some balls sure might be a little lighter or heavier than another. When you start to see how...

Spin The Racket (52:21): Mm-hmm.

Eddie Gonzalez (52:27): the US went to a slower, grittier court. know, favoring the baseliner. So now you got these baseline rallies that, you know, favor that style of play more versus than the servant volleyer. And then the string with the poly strings now that give you more spin, but there's a lot of, you know, I can't use a poly. just, mean, me personally, just my arm, I have to use a softer synthetic string, but these pros, they have to use a poly

Gerard (52:50): Thank

Eddie Gonzalez (52:57): generate that spin that they need. And then the rackets now are just lighter and stronger. And so I think those are factors that have impacted ⁓ the game than the ball.

Spin The Racket (53:11): Fair enough. Fair enough. I mean, there's so many variables. I think that was one of the points we made first episode. was like, as much as you want to claim that the ball can create all these differences, reality, these players and anyone playing tennis has to deal with weather conditions, has to deal with atmospheric pressure, wind. You're talking the surface. You're talking, yeah, like variances in temperature that can create a more lively ball or

Gerard (53:50): exactly. I'm curious to get your perspective as it relates to the state of the American men and pro tennis. So obviously there's been a lot of momentum that we've seen from the Fritz's of the world in terms of performing well in the Grand Slams, but you have just fallen a little bit short of winning the title.

Eddie Gonzalez (54:20): Well, you know, we've seen on the women's side again. So I will say, I mean, beyond Venus and Serena, you had Sloane Stevens that came through and won the US Open and she really should have won the French. She was up a set and a break and lost. That's Simona Hallup. And then Coco that came through. Jessica Pagulo was, you know, close and I still think Jessica could win a major. And then don't forget our Atlanta zone, Taylor Townsend, what she's done on the double side. I mean, that's really remarkable. ⁓

Gerard (54:55): Yes.

Eddie Gonzalez (55:09): We're close, we're close. mean, Riley Opelka I thought really had a shot before he had his injuries because he's seven foot, you know, and he's a good mover and a really good ball striker and a great server. you know, so he was, and then Tiafoe was showing some, you know, he's so athletic and just such a, you know, competitor, but just getting over that, winning seven matches just shows you how tough it is to win seven matches, three out of five.

Spin The Racket (55:35): It is.

Eddie Gonzalez (55:40): But gosh, we're close. I think Ben now really has he's he's close. He's got to serve. He's got the movement He's got to work a little bit more on being able to finish the points as a better volleyer and maybe making that forehand a little bit of a bigger weapon And then you know poor Corda has just had some injury issues But man, so if you're gonna ask me in the next three or five years, are we gonna have an American man? I'm gonna say yes I'm gonna say yes because you know, we didn't talk about Mickelson. mean Alex is such

Gerard (56:22): I love it. love it. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I think, you know, we asked the question to J.Y. earlier in the season and it said, hey, will an American man win by end of 2026? And he said, no, I think obviously that's only a year. Right. I think we extended out a bit more like you said, three to five years. That sounds a little more doable. But yeah, it seems like everyone is close to your point.

Spin The Racket (56:48): There's trajectory there. think that's what you were getting at Eddie is that like you may not see it in 12 months, but you extend it and there's trajectory for some of these guys to, ⁓ you know, hone their skills, get a little bit more mature, right? And start acting like they've been there and getting comfortable with those big moments to be able to close out, you know, some of those matches. ⁓

Eddie Gonzalez (57:22): Well, the physical, mean, physical, again, seven,

Spin The Racket (57:34): That's insane. Yeah. Put that man in a lab.

Gerard (57:37): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (57:48): Because he was playing along the same time as Rafa. And so Rafa one year lost to Robin Sutherling. And that created an opening for Roger to win it. Maybe center gets upset and Alcáez gets hurt, you know? And then all of a sudden there's a pathway that, because you can only win one match at a time and you don't have to beat everybody in the draw. You just have to beat the person you're supposed to play in the next match.

Gerard (57:48): Mm-hmm.

Spin The Racket (58:10): Yeah, I mean, you just saw this past week in Shanghai, right?

Eddie Gonzalez (58:27): I mean, guy with 204 in the

Spin The Racket (58:39): There you go.

Gerard (58:40): RUDE

Spin The Racket (58:40): We always like to close it off, you know, Eddie, with allowing and you've obviously already mentioned some of the some of these things throughout the podcast. But, you know, what's what are you currently working on? ⁓ You mentioned the exhibition. Is there anything else that that you're looking forward to?

Eddie Gonzalez (59:08): Yeah, you when I stepped away from the tournament, my priority was really family and ⁓ spending as much time with family and I've got... ⁓

Gerard (59:43): Cool.

Eddie Gonzalez (59:48): helping promote their new line, but she's ⁓ again doing some tennis, but mostly golf. But you know, I tell people if they're coming to me to have me consider something, I'll always listen. And like I said, with the opportunity to be a part of such an iconic venue with Madison Square Garden, bringing tennis back to the garden, it had a great 10 year run pre COVID. And but that was always in March, that was always kind of a one night exhibition.

Gerard (1:00:53): Yeah.

Eddie Gonzalez (1:00:58): And know, schools have lost physical education in the schools. And, you know, so I would like to see that be a big focus and help people play tennis at all ages. but other than that, yeah, my focus is spending time with family and enjoying Yeah.

Gerard (1:01:00): Mm-hmm.

Spin The Racket (1:01:13): We'll take you up on that word.

Eddie Gonzalez (1:02:46): Ditto to you guys, thanks for having me and I know you too have a bright future. You're a great looking doubles team together.

Spin The Racket (1:02:52): Thank you. Yeah, thank you. All right. Take care.

Gerard (1:02:54): Appreciate that. All right. Thanks a lot, Eddie.