by The temple of renowned international tennis rejected a gift of $ 10 million from the billionaire of the Bill Ackman’s designing fund after its widely criticized entry into its ATP Challenger event, according to Front Office Sports.
ACKMAN, 59, a long-standing tennis fan, participated in the open temple open in Rhode Island last week as a double team with the former top 10 Jack Sock, losing against Omar Jasika and Bernard Tomic 6-1, 7-5.
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The Challenger Tour is the level under the ATP tour, but always a real professional tournament. Ackman received an entry from Joker after a history of philanthropy with the temple of fame and played like, well, a 59 -year -old tennis enthusiast without any professional experience in a group of professionals. Jasika and Tomic were going openly easily with him, but that did not prevent him from losing straight sets.
The decision to add a billionaire to the tournament he welcomed led to a wave of criticisms of the temple of renown of the tennis community, notably the former world n ° 1 Andy Roddick, the last American to win a title of Simple Grand Slam.
Speaking on his “fast served” podcast, Roddick described the match “a total failure”, “pathetic”, “difficult to watch” and “the biggest joke that I looked in in professional tennis”. He actually declared that he had not blamed Ackman for his decision to play, placing the burden in the corridor and praised the billionaire’s efforts, but that he thought that the decisions behind the match would justify an exam.
“There was exactly one person in this court trying as hard as she could,” said Roddick. “… If you want to chat with me, go back and watch this video. You can’t tell me that there was more than one person who tried as hard as possible at every point, or any point. It was a disaster.
“It was under the temple of fame, in my opinion.”
You can judge the respective effort levels in the video of the match below:
Three days after the match, Ackman posted a long tweet in which he defended the Hall of Fame, criticized his own game and undertook to create an endowment of $ 10 million he would manage, giving the Salon 10% of the director each year.
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He also described the match a global success, describing it as “one of the greatest achievements of public relations in the history of tennis” for the room, partly because of its failure on the field, and challenged Roddick to a double match. He said that the criticism received by the hall were “entirely” on him, but also tried to explain why he played so badly.
“What was disclosed is that I played a double 10-day tournament before at the HOF, and I played very well. The field was made up of former pros and better players around the world, but more than 55 years. Richey Reneberg and I lost in the semi-finals with the ultimate winners of the tournament in the tie fear … where things were not tested, Professional tournament in a professional tournament and me.
“Jack also chose the advertising side and I played the advertising side of last year. I also served in the 12:30 p.m. sun with a stopwatch (a new experience for me), and to worsen things, the other side retained, making it look like a farce.”
Everyone has a different definition of success, but it seems that the room was less happy than Agamman on the way it happened. Although he refused comments to Fos, he would have declared in a letter to his members and to the board of directors that he would reject the gift to avoid “any perception of irregularity”.
This added: “With hindsight, we will no longer render this decision”, referring to the entry of Ackman.
Wednesday evening, Ackman tweeted that he would rather provide an endowment of $ 10 million to the Junior Tennis Champions Center, which has Frances Tiafoe among his graduates.
Ackman made sure to note that JTCC had already accepted the gift, adding “everything is good that ends well”.
