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USTA hires Allaster for pro division

The U.S. Tennis Association has hired Stacey Allaster, the former WTA Tour chairman and CEO, to run its professional tennis division, which includes the U.S. Open Tennis Championships.

The tennis governing body plans to announce the move today. Allaster starts April 18.

ALLASTER
Allaster was long considered one of the top (if not the top) female executives in sports when in October she stepped down from the WTA after a six-year reign leading the largest professional sport for women. She said at the time her desire to spend more time with her family was incompatible with the intense travel demands of the WTA chief executive role. However, she also had been under pressure to increase WTA revenue and had not found a new lead sponsor for the tour, a category that has been absent from the WTA since 2012.

Allaster’s title with the USTA — chief executive, professional tennis — is not new for the organization, but it has been vacant since Arlen Kantarian departed in 2008 following an internal power struggle with Gordon Smith, the USTA executive director to whom Allaster will report. The USTA had not been seeking to fill the role but saw an opportunity with Allaster. In Allaster, the USTA gets an executive who is steeped in the governance of the game. Part of her role will be to interact with the political bodies in the sport, like the WTA.

Prior to her time with the WTA, Allaster ran Tennis Canada’s ATP and WTA tournaments. She got her start in the sport playing and teaching.

“Stacey brings experience as a junior player, a tennis professional, a tournament director [and with] the WTA,” Smith said. “She is uniquely qualified and will add tremendous new value to a great team we already have.”

While Kantarian as chief executive, professional tennis, oversaw all revenue functions, Allaster’s role will be somewhat different, as it will be focused on the USTA’s professional tournaments and interactions with other governing bodies. For example, Lew Sherr, the USTA’s chief revenue officer, will continue to report to Smith. But David Brewer, who runs the U.S. Open for the USTA, will now report to Allaster instead of Smith.

Allaster, 52, speaking last week from a yoga and hiking trip in California, said she had always admired the USTA and even had a U.S. Open poster in her office when at Tennis Canada. She will split her time between the USTA’s headquarters in White Plains, N.Y., and the new USTA tennis campus under construction outside Orlando — a complex the group is touting as “the new home of American tennis.” It opens later this year, and some of the professional tennis group is relocating there.

The USTA’s professional tennis holdings include the U.S. Open, the Emirates Airline U.S. Open Series, and the Western & Southern Masters event in Cincinnati, among others. Allaster’s role will also encompass all global tennis political issues that affect the USTA, including drug testing and anti-corruption efforts.

Smith first approached Allaster in January about the post. She agreed two weeks ago to join the organization.

Allaster, who recently became an American citizen, and her husband have two school-age children. They live near St. Petersburg, Fla., where the WTA is based.

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