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Tournament Organizers Not Ready To Call Debut A Smash

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By CRISTINA LEDRA, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 14, 2008

Updated: 01/13/2008 09:11 pm

ST. LEO - When figuring whether the Grand Slam Futures Tampa Bay tennis tournament held at Saint Leo University this past week was a success, it may depend on who you ask.

The fans who attended witnessed competitive tennis, the players had good competition and aside from Sunday's rain delay, the weather was pleasant all week.

For GL Sports Entertainment, the company that brought the tournament to Pasco County for the first time, the experience was an early step of a work in progress.

"When you bring in an event like this, number one, you're dealing with that this is in many ways a community that doesn't have a lot of industry," said Curt Lutz, GL Sports Entertainment's CEO. "There are a lot of suburbs, a lot of houses, so there's an educational issue that you have to deal with, and the educational issue is far beyond people who can enjoy it from the fans' standpoint.

"It goes to the corporations and getting the businesses to understand the benefits of sponsoring something like this."

GL Sports Entertainment hopes the Grand Slam Futures is the one of the first of tournaments like it in multiple sports that call Pasco County home in the coming years.
Lutz and Mike Prenderville of WestGate Printing, the tournament's title sponsor, have been lobbying for new facilities in Pasco County to hold such tournaments.

Though they haven't received much support from community leaders to build new parks, Lutz is hopeful that holding the Grand Slam Futures is the starting point to show the kind of revenue that can be generated locally by tournaments such as this and the recent lacrosse tournament in Wesley Chapel.

"What we've been trying to do right in this community is through sports and the development of sports show how it will build this community," Lutz said. "Industry will build in Pasco County, so you won't just have a suburb of Tampa; you'll have a community that has grasped its need to create economic development for the sake of its future."
Lutz thinks that when tournaments come into town, lodging and restaurants and related businesses will sprout up to cater to the demand of corresponding visitors to the area and therefore create jobs.

"It doesn't matter if it's an $8-an-hour job, people are still working when they weren't before," Prenderville said.
Lutz said they were happy with holding the tournament at Saint Leo, despite the inconvenience of holding qualifying matches at Saddlebrook Resort in Wesley Chapel because Saint Leo had eight courts and 16 were needed to house all the matches.

He added that GL will be meeting with officials at Saint Leo to discuss bringing the tournament back there next year.

Reporter Cristina Ledra can be reached at (813) 948-4203 or cledra@tampatrib.com.

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