Author: Griffin Fabits

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. How did your collegiate tennis career at Northwestern prepare you for life after a playing career?I think excelling at anything in your college career helps you develop good work habits and helps you appreciate that if you set a goal for yourself and you work hard at it, you can achieve it. My wife was in theater. She applied herself in theater and and she did well, so tennis at Northwestern prepared me in the sense that I learned if I applied myself, I could excel. I also found that coming out of that tennis experience, I was more comfortable under pressure than most other people that I worked with. I had felt pressure a lot. They might have felt pressure in school, getting good grades or something, but [tennis] sort of transcended that. Playing under pressure helped prepare me for working under pressure in in the corporate world. I’m now celebrating 50 years in the corporate world. I was well served by the game of tennis going through that and learning how to perform under pressure. I think was probably the single greatest gift I got from tennis. In your various business and leadership endeavors, how did your tennis background help and assist you?I was cut from the freshman high school tennis team because I really wasn’t good enough, and I did not thrive immediately when I got my MBA and went into the corporate world. I learned that I really had to become a student of the corporate game. I had to work hard at it to understand it. I had to work harder than most to learn the nuances of what was expected in that arena, and I had the patience to do that. I knew it was going to be a long road. But ultimately, ten years into my career, it all started to come together, interestingly, after I was fired from a job. I had to gather myself and deal with the fact that I had a wife, two small children, and a very large mortgage and no job. That was pressure, and I figured out how to navigate that. I’d like to think that the game of tennis helped me there. As I got into the next stage of my career, I started to pull it all together. Over the next forty years of my career, things came together. My perspective was galvanized by losing my job. I was able to hit stride, but I had to be patient. There was there was no quick fix. It’s like, if you have a hitch in your forehand, there’s no quick fix. You gotta work work it, work it, work it, and then work it some more. It’s a process, and I learned to manage the process. In 2019, you were named the ITA’s David A Benjamin Achievement Award recipient. What did that mean to you personally and professionally?Gosh, the the sport of tennis gave me so much. The collegiate experience gave me so much. David Benjamin is a friend of mine who I hold in the highest regard. For me to be acknowledged by the ITA was just quite an honor. To be thought of in any way associated with those very inspiring coaches was a real honor for me. I knew the people, I knew college tennis, I knew the ITA, and I knew all these coaches that I held in high regard who weren’t doing it for the money. They were doing it for the love of the sport and the love of the kids, and and I found that very inspiring. To be among that group was really quite special, and it still is. How did Conant Leadership come to be, and what do you enjoy about this endeavor?I’ve been a a leadership geek for my whole career, all fifty years of my corporate career, and I quickly came to realize that boy, we could get a whole lot more done if we could bring others along on the journey with us. I could only do so much as an individual contributor. I saw just so many examples of what I considered to be inadequate leadership.I said, there’s just gotta be a better way, so I became a student of leadership early in my career. As I started to hit stride, I had opportunities to get to know and work with some of the leadership gurus of the 20th and 21st centuries. I learned so much from them and I saw, gosh, if you could create the right culture, the right high-performance culture, in a way that was tough-minded on standards and with kind-hearted people, you could do almost anything. I didn’t see a lot of people paying attention to that, so I focused on that when I was a president and CEO, and I saw great return from it. I saw the companies I was working with become renowned for what is now called employee engagement, where we had a spring in our culture that was second to none. I could see what a difference it made. If you created the right culture — guess what? You perform better. It’s not rocket science. I was attracted to it then, and then I devoted myself full-time to it when I when I retired back in 2011. It’s been going on 15 years now. But even when I was a CEO, I spent more time on attracting, developing, retaining, engaging with my employees. I was all in on the talent piece and the leadership piece for the last couple decades of my career. I’ve been doing this in a very serious way for about 35 years, and I’m going to keep doing it until I get it right. Writing hand-written notes to your employees has been a staple of your career. Where does that come from?I was a terrible introvert and I was a terrible interviewer. I had a mentor say, ‘Look, you’ve …

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Gordon Smith willed it into existence. One day, he’d suit up for Dan Magill as a Georgia Bulldog. He was sure of it. Tennis first started as a hobby but quickly evolved into much more for the Rome, Georgia, native. A young Smith loved the sport and everything it represented, the mental fortitude it required and the physical demands of a long match. It began with a concrete wall and an old racket he borrowed from his father, as Smith spent countless hours of his childhood hitting at a nearby park. As his athletic aspirations came into further focus, and as the self-described “skinniest kid you’ve ever seen” developed into a legitimate junior prospect, Smith could envision himself playing for the legendary coach Magill with match point in front of the home faithful at Henry Feild Stadium. “When I started playing tennis seriously as a junior, I had one thought in mind: ‘Could I ever be good enough to play for Dan McGill in Athens, Georgia?‘ “For a Georgia kid, that’s a big dream. I said, ‘I need to be the best player in the state, I need to be one of the best players in the south and I’ve got to play for Coach Magill at Georgia. I never even considered anything else.” He did just that, arriving to Athens in the fall of 1970 for his freshman year. His roommate was a young man named Manuel Diaz, Jr., from San Juan, Puerto Rico. The two became fast friends, doubles partners – and forever transformed Georgia men’s tennis. The duo helped the Bulldogs to four consecutive SEC Championships and ushered the program into a new era. While Smith’s Georgia teams never won an NCAA Championship, he helped lay the foundation. Magill went on to deliver 13 SEC outdoor championship, eight indoor titles, five NCAA individual titles and two NCAA Team Championships (1985, 1987) across 34 seasons as head coach. “Coach was great on strategy, but what he was really great on was, when you went out on the court, you wanted to win for him,” Smith recalls of the late Magill, “and you thought you were going to. “It’s one of those things about coaching that you can’t quantify. It’s really kind of a magical thing. He just gave you that confidence. You were a better player when you played for him than you were before you came to Athens.” ‘He has brought our sport to new levels’: Smith Retires as USTA CEO Decades later, the iconic Georgia trio of Smith, Diaz Jr. and Magill are all members of the ITA Men’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame, enshrined for their contributions to collegiate tennis and their place in Georgia tennis history. Gordon Smith willed it into existence.

TEMPE, Ariz. – Sargis Sargsian wondered how he’d celebrate. Up 5-2 in the third set of the 1995 NCAA Men’s singles championship against USC’s Brett Hansen, Sargsian was feeling it. He was moments away from becoming Arizona State’s first national champion. History was at his fingertips as he served for the match. As his mind drifted, Hansen dug in. “Well,” Sargsian recounts, “I double-faulted. I lost that game. He held, and now it’s 5-4 and I’m not thinking about a celebration anymore.” Sargsian, the top-seeded individual at the ‘95 championships, rebounded to look the part of the country’s top player. A “monster game” propelled him to a narrow 6-4 win in the third-set, and ultimately, legacy. He remains the only Sun Devil to be crowned a national champion. “It was just a relief,” he said. “When you play a match this close and match this big, it was just a happy relief. That tournament just felt like it was meant for me to win it.” It’s been thirty years since Sargsian was perfect. Nobody was better than the Sun Devil sophomore in 1995, and certainly not at these NCAA Championships. Days before play began, Sargsian had a practice match against ASU’s No. 6 singles player – and hardly broke a sweat in a clean 6-0, 6-0 win. It couldn’t have been better timing for Sargsian, who grappled with physical and mental fatigue in the month leading up to the championships. “That whole year, I was playing unbelievable. I won a lot of matches, but when we got closer to NCAAs, I kind of burned out. My game, I took a couple of losses, but my game fell apart a little bit. One month before NCAAs, I remember just working really hard and pushing myself really hard. My game wasn’t near my best, not even close, and when we went to the tournament, I remember having a practice with our No. 6. I drilled him, 6-0, 6-0.  “At that moment, I was like, I guess this is meant to be. I’m going to win this.” “He was a great athlete and a tremendous mover,” former Arizona State head coach Lou Belken said. “A really, really awesome mover. He had a great backhand. He obviously competed well. Not only was he a great match player for us, but he was the kind of guy who did not like to lose in practice. If you beat him in practice, you beat him. Quite frankly, I don’t ever remember guys beating him. He was there to compete and did a good job with it. He was a dominant player.” Sargsian’s journey to both the collegiate space and Tempe, Arizona was rather circuitous. While attending the Institute of Sport in Armenia, he came to the United States by way of the national team in 1993 to compete against Ivy League schools in the northeast. While playing stateside, Belken was tipped off by several guys who were wowed by Sargsian’s talents at a local tournament. “One of them called me and said, ‘Coach, this kid can really play and he’s looking for a school,’” Belken remembers. “I was actually recruiting somebody else at the time and didn’t really act on it. Another guy called me and said, ‘Coach, this kid can really play.’ Finally, the first guy called me again and said, ‘This kid can really play.’ “Well, he was right.” Sargsian largely flew under the radar prior to this, and Belken’s priorities quickly shifted to bringing him to Tempe. Despite writing to a number of schools and coaches, Sargsian received just two offers once he became dedicated to pursuing a collegiate career – the University of Miami and Arizona State. The Sun Devils offered a full-ride scholarship and Sargsian packed his bags and headed west. In the fall of 1994, it was evident the Sun Devils had a unique talent in Sargsian. “The first tournament I took him to,” Belken said, “they had a thing called the national clay courts, and he started off in the qualifying draw there and then lost in the final of the main draw. I had a pretty good idea then that he was a good player.” He quickly established himself as one of the country’s most elite players before a back injury suffered at the conference tournament halted what was sure to be a lengthy run at his first NCAA Championships. Instead, Sargsian headed home that summer to address his nagging pain. “We were just hoping he got through the surgery and could continue on playing,” Belken said. “He ended up being the most dominant player in the country the next year.” Sargsian returned to Tempe for his sophomore year as a more polished product. He won three grand slam championships in 1995, capped with the singles championship on May 21. Even today, thirty years removed from hoisting the singles title, Sargsian is amazed by the gravity of being an NCAA champion. “What’s funny about the NCAA, is I go on tour and I was top-50, and so many times people say, ‘Oh, cool, you’re top-50.’ But whenever I say I won the NCAAs, it feels like it has more pull than when you were a professional. Top-100 [on tour]? Yeah, no big deal. ‘Oh, you won NCAAs? Wow.’ “If I didn’t go to Arizona State, there was no way I would make it to professional tennis. Unquestionably. How much I improved in college is just crazy. I’m really not exaggerating when I say this: If I don’t go to college and I don’t get a scholarship and I try to play on the tour, I don’t make it. It helped me tremendously. Without it, I would not have achieved what I have achieved. It was my gateway to [professional] tennis.”

During his time at Stanford, Wheaton earned All-American accolades and grabbed an All-Pac-10 selection, qualifying for both singles and doubles at the NCAA Championships.

Dr. Brian Hainline received the 2016 ITA David A Benjamin Achievement Award. This past spring, Dr. Hainline was inducted into the ITA Men’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame.

The ITA Division I Men’s National Team Indoor Championship is a National Championship that welcomes 16 of the top men’s teams from across the country to battle it out on a national stage. Now heading into its 50th year, the ITA Division I National Men’s Indoor Championship has seen the likes of players such as John McEnroe, John Isner, Kevin Anderson, JJ Wolf, and most recently Ben Shelton all compete. The tournament has also been witness to ITA Men’s Hall of Fame members including former Illini Head Coach Craig Tiley.   Tiley led the Fighting Illini to the ITA Division I National Team Indoor Championship titles in 2003 and 2004. In 2003, his team continued on in dominant fashion by also taking the NCAA Men’s Tennis National title with a perfect 32-0 record. Combined with their record from 2002, Tiley coached Illinois to the program’s longest consecutive win streak in NCAA history at 64 matches.  As the head coach of the Illini from 1992-2005, Tiley held a career record of 274-77 (.781) and guided the team to nine Big Ten regular-season titles and six Big Ten Tournament championships. Tiley was a two-time Wilson ITA Division I National Coach of the Year (1999, 2003) and eight-time Big Ten Coach of the Year.   Following his time at Illinois, Tiley served as the Director of Player Development for Tennis Australia. In 2006, he was named Director of the Australian Open and in 2013, was selected as the successor of the governing body that oversees tennis in Australia. Tiley also served as captain of the South Africa Davis Cup team from 1998-2001. Tiley was inducted into the ITA Men’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame in 2010.  For more information regarding the 2024 ITA Division I National Men’s Team Indoor Championships, visit the tournament event page.   About the ITA Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame – The Intercollegiate Tennis Association Men’s and Women’s Halls of Fame aspire to preserve and celebrate the history and further the development of intercollegiate tennis through the collection of historic memorabilia and with inductions of notable players, coaches, and contributors. About the ITA – The Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) is the governing body and coaches association of college tennis, both an advocate and an authority for the sport and its members. Comprised of 1,260 colleges and universities, 20,000 student-athletes, 1,700 varsity programs, 3,000 coaches, and 1,350 college tennis officials, the ITA empowers college tennis coaches at all levels to deliver vibrant tennis programs that are vital to their college communities and transformational to their student-athletes. Follow the 2023-24 college tennis season on the ITA website and ITA social channels on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

The Australian Open, held annually at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, has witnessed the triumphs of many ITA Hall of Famers including Alex Olmedo and Dorothy Cheney.   Born in Peru in 1936, Alex Olmedo came to the United States in 1954 and two years later, began his great Southern Cal career under coach George Toley. While at USC, Olmedo won the singles and doubles NCAA titles in 1956 and ‘58. Playing for the US Davis Cup team in 1958, Olmedo led the Americans to the title, winning both of his singles matches and teaming with Ham Richardson in doubles to beat Australia in the final. The duo teamed up again later that same year to win the US Championships, now the US Open, at Forest Hills.  The following year in 1959, Olmedo rose to No. 2 in the world, winning both the Australian and Wimbledon singles titles. At the Australian, Olmedo defeated Australia’s Neale Fraser 6-1, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 to claim the title. By the end of his professional career, Olmedo won 21 titles and had a career singles record of 401-358. After retiring from tennis in 1965, Olmedo became the teaching pro at the Beverly Hills Hotel where he worked with stars like Katharine Hepburn, Robert Duvall and Chevy Chase. Olmedo was inducted into the ITA Men’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame in 1983 and to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987.  Much like Olmedo, Dorothy Cheney found success down under at the Australian Open. The daughter of tennis pioneer May Sutton, Cheney learned the game of tennis from her Aunt Florence, adopting her mother’s famous Western forehand. In 1936, Cheney broke into the USLTA, now the USTA, Top 10 and two years later became the first American woman to win the Australian singles title. In the 1938 Australian Championship final, now known as the Australian Open, Cheney defeated Australia’s Dorothy Stevensen in a straight set 6-3, 6-2 victory.    Cheney entered Rollins College while continuing to compete and find success nationally, taking the US Clay Court singles title in 1944. Rejoining the international circuit following World War II, Cheney reached the mixed doubles finals at Wimbledon and the French Open in 1946. In 1957, Cheney began competing at the senior level, launching a record-setting winning streak.  Cheney was inducted into the ITA Women’s Hall of Fame in 1998 and to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2004.  About the ITA Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame – The Intercollegiate Tennis Association Men’s and Women’s Halls of Fame aspire to preserve and celebrate the history and further the development of intercollegiate tennis through the collection of historic memorabilia and with inductions of notable players, coaches, and contributors. About the ITA – The Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) is the governing body and coaches association of college tennis, both an advocate and an authority for the sport and its members. Comprised of 1,260 colleges and universities, 20,000 student-athletes, 1,700 varsity programs, 3,000 coaches, and 1,350 college tennis officials, the ITA empowers college tennis coaches at all levels to deliver vibrant tennis programs that are vital to their college communities and transformational to their student-athletes. Follow the 2023-24 college tennis season on the ITA website and ITA social channels on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.