Bill Rapp (BR): I’ve been tournament director since 2001, so this is my ninth year. But I started in ’83 and worked my way up. I started as a volunteer usher and then decided that I enjoyed being involved in the tournament. So, I thought about how I could bring value to the event, that other people maybe didn‘t have. I wasn’t a top player. I played in college but never pro. I didn’t know anybody in the business, so I just kind of scrapped my way up from the bottom.

I learned how to be an expert on ball kids training from Barbara Holtgren, who was the queen of ball kids training, from Stanford University. I spent probably 10 or 12 hours training with her, read her training manual. Barry MacKay then gave me a chance to be assistant ball kids trainer, and worked my way up to running the program and training all the kids. I went from there to doing corporate clinics for some of his sponsors and then eventually got involved in selling sponsorships. Then the San Jose Sharks purchased a half ownership in the event in 1994. During the years before that, I was still the full-time tennis director for a club in Redwood City. I got involved with the USPTA and eventually became president of that organization for the Northern California division.

Then the Sharks called me up and asked if I wanted to be involved, so I wrote up some ticket programs for them and eventually came to work here. Now I’m here and not sure how it all happened. But I’ve tried to work hard, treat people right along the way, and bring in some revenue. And here I am, tournament director.

TAT: What are some of the things the average fan has no idea the tournament director does?

BR: Well, there [are] all kinds of things. We do everything from approving someone to get a complimentary ticket, which I’m a real stickler on. I don’t like to give away tickets, because it’s one of our assets. Unlike a lot of tournament directors, I sell sponsorships—selling tickets and sponsorships. Then we occasionally get a call when a player is in town, and someone has got some type of strep throat or they’re sick, and I’ll arrange for a doctor to actually go to their hotel.

I’ve had some strange requests. I’ve had some young ladies who have wanted to pay me cash under the table to meet, and hopefully marry, a player. Obviously, I turned that opportunity down. It’s surprising the offers I’ve received. The good news is that I turned those offers into ticket sales, in the front row, to hopefully meet the player.

To let you know, we’ve got about 750 people here working on this event—160 ball kids, and so on.

TAT: It takes a village.

BR: Yeah!

TAT: What are some of the plans for the future? Do you see many changes coming to the dates, the location, the tournament status, or anything?

BR: We’ll be locked in to this location for many years, since the event is owned by Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment. Really, my goal is, we talk to and do research in the community and with the tennis fans to find out what they want. And a few years ago, we had a comment that I felt was interesting. ‘Hey, we’ve had Agassi and Roddick here for four years in a row. How about some new blood?’ So, like this year, I decided to change the look of the tournament a little bit. I brought in [Kei] Nishikori, a younger guy who was here last year. But also some new guys: [Juan Martin] Del Potro, [Guillermo] Canas, [Marcos] Baghdatis, guys that you’ve seen at the Australian Open but maybe don’t show up here—some older guys, some younger guys. So we have some veterans here.

The other thing I try to do is, last year, we put on the exhibition with Sampras. That was just kind of a crazy idea, I talked with his brother Gus, a former tournament director who’s a friend of mine, and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about Pete taking a wild card into the main draw?’ ‘I don’t think so, Bill.’ ‘Hmm, how about playing an exhibition on Monday night?’ Because we do something here other tournaments don’t do, which is pre-schedule matches in October. So I do the Tuesday night, Wednesday night, but you can’t do Monday night. So, why start off with a weak Monday night? So that’s where Sampras came in last year and drew about 9,000 fans. This year, even with the tough economy, we still had 8,300 people here.

Occasionally, I’ll do a little strange twist. I brought in [Mahesh] Bhupathi and [Leander] Paes in 2002, actually paid them their first doubles guarantee to play here. And we drew several thousand Indian fans from the local community. And then [in] 2006, I brought in [John] McEnroe [to play doubles with Jonas Bjorkman], and that sold more tickets than any player I’ve ever had. The nice part was he ended up winning.

TAT: With the singles draw, just how much influence do you get in attracting players?

BR: Good question. I have a pot of money that I can pay for guarantees. What I do is sit down with another gentleman I work with, Kent Russell, who’s our VP of Sales & Marketing here, and he enjoys the tennis side of things. We’ll sit down and put together a budget. This company is very fiscally responsible, so we don’t just throw money. But we have to have a purpose and a plan. So we’ll look at ‘Do we want Fish back?’ And ‘What is his value?’ Or somebody like Nishikori, with the large Japanese population around here. And those kind of things. Then we mix it all together, make decisions, put them in order, and I start knocking them off one at a time. This year, the good news is we had probably eight or nine guys who were headliners. Which, for this event, is remarkable.

TAT: It’s a markedly stronger field this year, just by looking at the ranking of the guy seeded eight, this year versus last year.

BR: Exactly.

TAT: What are some of the ways you get the community involved in the event? Do you have people knocking on your door, or do you have to go looking for it?

BR: We actually have a lot of folks that want to do things in conjunction with the event, but I’m very careful about that. One thing I don’t want to do is muddy things up. We’re very clear that our charity is East Palo Alto Tennis & Tutoring. We have a long history with Dick Gould at Stanford and what he’s done there. For those that aren’t familiar, it’s a program for kids in East Palo Alto, a historically underserved area. The kids come into the Stanford campus, and the men’s and women’s tennis team members donate their time to teach the kids tennis. And then Stanford students donate their time to tutor the students. It is a rich program, amazingly good.

One of the things I really believe in is I don’t want to give away tickets to anybody unless they can’t come otherwise. We actually have a couple of donors who come in and buy a couple of thousand dollars worth of tickets and say, ‘If you can find a group of kids who can’t get here on their own, bring them in.’ So we’ve done that for the last 10 years, probably. We don’t want tennis to be just for rich people. We want it to be accessible to anyone who wants to come out and watch the yellow ball spin.

TAT: Has the local media been responsive to the event? Has it been easy or difficult to get coverage? How’s that going these days, when you hear different opinions about the popularity of tennis in the United States.

BR: That’s a great question. My thought there would be the local media has been very, very supportive. A big part of that has been Jim Sparaco, who has been here for many years in public relations and has gone out very proactively, contacted writers, or whether it be radio or TV or whatever the medium is, even bloggers. And also, because of our relationship with the Sharks and the other properties, we do have a legitimate, strong relationship with the media, and that’s why we’ve received good coverage.

TAT: With Memphis now being elevated to a 500-level tournament, what effect do you think that will have on this tournament? Does that help make San Jose a lead-in to that, or might it cause players to focus on that event instead?

BR: Actually, the last day of August 2008, we purchased Memphis, purchased a 500-level men’s event and a WTA event, which actually starts tomorrow, so I’ll be on a plane tomorrow night. Actually, what it’s done is strengthened our tournament and their tournament. In the past, we’ve been more of the money investors in the players, and then Memphis has kind of come on our coattails. Now, with the prize money here at $600,000, and there at $1.25 million, it’s interesting if you look at the player fields. They’re almost identical. The Bryan brothers won’t play Memphis, but out there we had a couple of other players, not Americans, but like Andreev, who’s a top-20 player, come in.

And then on the women’s side, we draw Dokic, who just did well at the Australian, Wozniacki, Azarenka. One thing that is a little interesting, I find, some of the men players enjoy going to Memphis because of the female players. Something I never really thought about. So each event has helped the other. It’s one reason our company purchased that event—to solidify our investment here.

TAT: It’s an interesting time on the tennis calendar. Players come out of Australia, and there are basically three parallel tournament swings through Europe, through South America, and here in North America. It makes sense for players to pick one, and follow it along.

BR: That really is my job, to try to convince guys instead of going to the South American swing, or to the Rotterdam, Marseille, Dubai, is to come here to the States. One of the reasons we have both events is to strengthen that opportunity to bring them here.

TAT: What do you think of the state of tennis in Northern California, be it amateur, pro, or whatever?

BR: I think in Northern California tennis is strong. Lots of leagues, the league play here is very strong, and I think you can kind of judge health by that. There [are] still a lot of good players coming out of here. We have some of the best coaches, with [Larry] Stefanki, Brad Gilbert. It’s kind of a coach haven here. There are a lot of strong tennis programs here, Stanford, Cal. With the Banana Slugs over in Santa Cruz, they’ve pretty much kicked everyone’s tail [in NCAA Division III]. Interestingly, they brought an alumni group in this year, just from the tennis program, a group of 115 people. So I think tennis is strong. The USPTA division here is well over 700 members. With the economy downturn and the other issues, I think there are going to be changes in all of our lives, but tennis is quite strong in the Bay Area.