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Rock 'n' roll tennis Quirky Korff makes Mahwah the place to be
Updated: Friday July 20, 2001 2:50 PM
MAHWAH, N.J. -- A few years ago, tennis promoter John Korff figured that he was paying Steffi Graf such an absurd chunk of change to play in his exhibition that he might as well maximize her value. He pointed her to his answering machine and asked her to read a script. "Hello. You've reached the Steffi Graf Grand Slam hotline. I just won Wimbledon for the seventh time. My next Grand Slam will be the U.S. Open. But July 12-18, I'll be playing the A&P Tennis Classic in Mahwah, New Jersey. To leave a message for me, press 1. To leave a message for John Korff, press 2." Suffering from a serial case of arrested development, Korff, 48, doesn't push the envelope so much as he whacks it like Justine Henin's backhand. The rare Harvard Business School graduate who lists his favorite book as If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss, Korff is tennis' answer to Bill Veeck, a marketing savant who beats hasty retreat from convention and considers no idea too outrageous. Played on a makeshift court in the parking lot of a Sheraton Hotel in suburban New Jersey, the A&P Tennis Classic is less a tennis showcase than it is a county fair, replete with hot-air balloons overhead, corn-eating contests and post-match concerts. Korff's self-styled quirkiness and the new dimension he gives to thinking outside the box have made him persona non grata in some of tennis' more staid circles. But one glance at the sponsorships and fan support the A&P has drawn since its inception 22 years ago and it's clear the man is on to something. "Look, it's a tennis tournament we're running here, not the Camp David Peace Accords," Korff says. "That's the problem with tennis. Too many stuffed shirts and guys in Brooks Brothers loafers who take themselves and their event too seriously." The headliner of the 2001 event -- which is going on this week -- is Jennifer Capriati. But the world's third-ranked player is sharing the stage (literally) with Huey Lewis and the News, Randy Travis, a chili cook-off sponsored by Pepcid AC, and a road race. In the past, Korff has asked players to judge limbo contests during changeovers. He has even paid ring announcer Michael Buffer $5,000 to introduce the players. (" Amy Frazier wouldn't wear boxing gloves that night," says Korff dyspeptically. "She said it was too unprofessional.") Several years ago, Korff ordered the disc jockey to play The Stripper when Anna Kournikova, then a teenager, took the court. After some fans protested that this was inappropriate, Korff toned it down. The next year, she was heralded by the song Short Shorts. "I know tennis likes to think of itself as a self-selling sport," says Korff. "But Ai Sugiyama against Mary Pierce isn't always going to cut it. On the other hand, people might come if there's a Village People concert after the match." The players often wear looks of puzzled bemusement as they inhale the carnival atmosphere or get dragged into the odd lip-synching contest. (But then, the six-figure guarantees they earn for a few days' of tennis make any embarrassment go down a lot easier.) Others wonder why the WTA Tour doesn't incorporate more of Korff's fan-friendly innovations. Not all of Korff's brainchildren have panned out, however. A few years ago, he was set to pony up $75,000 and hire Dennis Rodman be a chair umpire for an A&P match. Then Rodman's agent told Korff there was one caveat: "Dennis might decide not to show up." A pre-match diaper-changing contest in 1999 turned into a disaster when the courts became stained with baby excrement. A "nicest legs" contest was deemed too sexist and replaced the next night by a "nicest eyes" competition. Korff learned much of his hustling and promoting acumen at the knee of Ion Tiriac, the you'd-have-to-invent-him-if-he-didn't-exist Romanian player, agent, coach and now politician. While at Harvard, Korff managed the Boston Lobsters of World TeamTennis and Tiriac was the player-coach. Tiriac saw that Korff was a fitness nut -- today, Korff has given up running 100-mile races but is still among the country's 10 best staircase racers -- and challenged him to a sit-up contest in a sauna. Korff did 249. Tiriac dramatically extinguished the cigarette he was smoking and completed 250. Knowing that Korff was desperate to recoup the money, Tiriac made a bet over dinner: "Double or nothing says I can't eat this glass stemware." Korff bit. Then Tiriac bit, chewed and swallowed the glass. Korff claims that he was out $300. "I figured the story paid for itself," he says. Mahwah's longtime title sponsor, A&P, has announced that it will be pulling its support after this year. So Korff has hired Infinity Broadcasting -- which owns WFAN, the country's seminal sports-talk radio station -- to assist with the marketing of next year's event. Even so, Korff has an idea of his own. "I'm thinking of making it like the NCAA basketball tournament and having rich people in New Jersey pay to host early matches at their private courts and then holding the Final Four at Mahwah," he says. "Wait till the tennis world gets a load of that." Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim covers tennis for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send a question to his Tennis Mailbag.
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