Back in 1991, tennis promoter John Korff signed up 15-year-old tennis
phenomenon Jennifer Capriati to play his tournament in Mahwah, N.J. He
then enlisted his 20-year-old nephew to show the young star a good time.
"Get her a fake ID, take her to some trance clubs, whatever—I
don't want to know. But get her back in one piece," Mr. Korff
recalled instructing his nephew. When Ms. Capriati's father called
soon after to ensure that Mr. Korff, as tournament director, would keep
an eye on his daughter, he remembered thinking, "Oh my God, do you
have the wrong guy!" But Mr. Korff might just be the right guy to
bring some much-needed vim to the U.S. Open. Sure, he wears dopey
sports-memorabilia shirts, runs marathons backwards and stays in shape
by sneaking into tall buildings, dodging security guards and scaling
flights upon flights of stairs. But after 25 years of running an
unorthodox women's tournament and promoting sporting events on the
fringes of the tennis establishment, the 54-year-old now sits squarely
on the stodgy governing body that oversees the Open and every official
match played in the country. "Tennis is such a sport of
traditionalists, and we abhor change," said former Mayor David
Dinkins, who also sits on the board of the United States Tennis
Association. "Not to denigrate the others, but John's certainly
a breath of fresh air." Since coming on as one of the board's
two business advisors in January 2005 (the other was a septuagenarian
mergers-and-acquisition specialist), Mr. Korff—a Grateful Dead
groupie and inveterate showman who promoted New York's Olympic bid
by hiring the world's top archer to stand on a moving taxi and shoot
an arrow through the hole of a bagel—has lobbied noisily for the
game to loosen up. Besides supporting the introduction of instant replay
to the Open this year, Mr. Korff wants the players to linger on the
court to sign autographs, and the fans to stick around for concerts
after the matches. He eventually envisions a week-long U.S. Open
festival. "All of a sudden, people have realized that the
traditional rules and the environment of tennis needed more sis-boom-bah
to make it part of mainstream entertainment," said Mr. Korff, who
holds an M.B.A. from Harvard and a predilection for the word awesome.
"We're trying to make tennis hip, cool and fun." That is
no easy task when your sport's most dominant player is a humorless
Swiss who makes Mats Wilander seem downright outrageous. But Mr. Korff
says he has surmounted much tougher, and taller, challenges. On
Friday afternoon, before running up the 27 flights of the Fisk Building,
where he occupies a cluttered office, the wiry eccentric sat behind his
desk telling stories about the old days. He wore a loud shirt from the
1990 All-Star Game in his hometown of Chicago, and looked around the
room with his perennially sleepy eyes. Hanging on the yellow walls were
photos of Michael Jordan and Richard Nixon, as well as his diploma from
the Harvard Business School and a list of 2006 USTA board meetings.
Stacked beside his desk were nine cases of Poland Spring water and a
pile of shirts reading "USA Stair Racing Team," of which he is
the only member. Mr. Korff explained how, before his hair had grayed
to salt and pepper and a wedding band had arrived on his ring finger, he
first started climbing the stairs to sweat out daily hangovers from his
late-night benders. And it was exactly one of those drunken nights that
landed him his greatest coup as a tennis promoter. In June 1991, he
went out drinking in a Tampa bar with Monica Seles' brother, Zoltan.
"Zoltan was not exactly the most balanced person," said Mr.
Korff, who described Mr. Seles as having bleached blond hair and riding
a motorcycle in an orange jumpsuit. Nevertheless, after about a dozen
drinks, they were doing business. Mr. Seles hinted that his sister,
who had just won the first two legs of the Grand Slam, the Australian
Open and the French Open, might pull out of Wimbledon early. Mr.
Korff—who had already shelled out $300,000 for Ms. Seles to play his
own tournament, which followed the All England Club's by only a few
weeks—offered Mr. Seles an extra $50,000 if his sister would hide
from the press following her Wimbledon withdrawal. "I thought,
`This is awesome,'" said Mr. Korff. Everything went according
to plan. Ms. Seles mysteriously dropped out of Wimbledon and arrived to
play his tournament. There was a media frenzy and a sold-out crowd.
Donald Trump and Marla Maples, "in a dress the size of a
napkin," applauded in the stands. The tournament was a giant
success, with Ms. Capriati, fresh from the trance clubs, beating Ms.
Seles 6-3, 7-5 in the final. What made such a final even more
improbable was that Mr. Korff's tournament had lost its official
status in 1989, and the winner earned none of the coveted A.T.P. points
that move a player up in the world rankings. "I paid them a bunch
of money," Mr. Korff said, explaining how he got the top women to
play. He also assured top players like Steffi Graf easy early-round
matches, free of risks like competent but boring 11th-ranked players in
the world. "We made sure we didn't have any No. 11's,"
said Mr. Korff. "We had some girl named Sue from Teaneck, N.J., and
Steffi was in the final every year." Mr. Korff's guiding
philosophy is that besides a few tennis aficionados who still long for
the old country clubs and lament the wearing of anything but pressed
white shorts, people come to a match to be entertained. To that end, Mr.
Korff let fans keep the balls shanked into the crowd long before the
Open did, and he also made music a staple on the court. Like Apollo
Creed, players entered the court to the accompaniment of songs over the
P.A. system. He promoted concerts on the days between matches, featuring
the Beach Boys, Chicago, and Huey Lewis and the News. (It was the
80's.) For the 2007 U.S. Open, he hopes to sign "big names"
like Billy Joel or Bon Jovi to play Open-sponsored concerts. (Mr. Korff
is apparently unaware that is no longer the 80's.) At around
noon, it became time for Mr. Korff's workout and training for the
Empire State Building Run-Up. (In 2003, he shot up to the top in 14:13,
a record in his age group.) He slipped into red Hawaiian shorts and his
gray "USA Stair Racing Team" T-shirt. He stretched his legs
against a bookshelf and took an elevator down to the basement. At the
foot of the first stair, he measured the step's height between his
thumb and forefinger. "Eight and a half inches," he said.
"The tough ones are nine and a half." Moments later, Mr. Korff
began bounding up the stairs two at a time. He didn't use the
handrails. As he stepped onto the 10th floor, he explained the futility
of security guards in private buildings who try to chase him down.
"It's stupid—they can't catch me," he said. That
said, he admitted that machine-gun fire, which a guard in Zimbabwe used
to scare him off, worked very well. On the 17th floor, without a drop
of sweat on his brow, he pointed out that, like tennis, stair-climbing
is not a solitary pursuit. In the Viacom building, he climbed past a
couple engaged in a sex act; on the corporate buildings of Wall Street,
his ascent interrupted traders getting high on coke. (Mr. Korff is
partial to sedating stimulants, and is known to pick discarded joints
off the steps for post-workout unwinding.) Four minutes and 47
seconds after taking the first step, Mr. Korff touched the door to the
roof on the 26th floor. He casually headed down to take the elevator
back to the basement, where he would repeat the climb five more times.
Opening the door to leave the stairway, he took another look up at the
steps. "This is my Wimbledon!"


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