Australia businessreview

TENNIS AUSTRALIA
Craig Tiley, the CEO of Tennis Australia, in a rare
interview, talks at large about his leadership
approach, his vision for the organisation he
heads, and the potential tennis has to capture
the imagination of a new generation
Why does tennis fascinate?
What lies behind its
soaring popularity? Clearly
it has a lot to do with the game’s
gladiatorial nature; the spectacle of
individual athletes contending for
the big prizes and kudos of the top
tournaments. At that level you could
hardly call it a team sport, but as we
have slowly begun to realise, star
players only arise if there’s the right
infrastructure - if children can get
involved early on, and young people
access good facilities and coaching.
Craig Tiley doesn’t seem to mind
that he never made the big time as
a player, having been a bit long in
the tooth when he started playing
in his native South Africa – at
just 12! “I had coaches that were
very passionate about coaching
and teaching and I learned as
much about the passion as the
technique,” he admits. “I was not
a good enough tennis player to
make a career of it but I didn’t mind
that because I learned so many
other things.” Well, you don’t get
to captain the national Davis Cup
team if you aren’t a mean player:
that and the ‘other things’ he picked
up about tennis are part of what
makes him perhaps the highest
profile leader in the sport today.
The Australian Open, with its
112-year history, starts the tennis
year with a bang in January. Tiley
has been running this event as
Tournament Director since 2007
and since 2013 has combined
this with the role of CEO of
Tennis Australia (TA), the national
governing body for the sport
comparable to the Lawn Tennis
Association in the UK. His path
has not involved filling in too many
38 September 2017