W&S Open owes much of its success to Flory
The same guy — Novak Djokovic — who just won Wimbledon on your television set (or favorite mobile device) and is the world’s No. 1 men’s tennis player, will be at arm’s length sometime the week of Aug. 10-18 in Mason, where the Western and Southern Open has been played since 1979.
He will be joined on the women’s tour side by Wimbledon winner Simona Halep as well as Ashleigh Barty, the world’s No. 1 female player, and Serena Williams, one of the world’s most famous players.
More importantly, the spirit of Paul Flory, a former Procter & Gamble executive who grew up in Dayton and attended Colonel White Junior High School before his family moved, will hover over everything, even though he’s been gone for six years.
Flory, who died in early 2013 at age 90, never lost his volunteer status at the tournament that migrated through several name changes and now goes by the Western & Southern Open, part of an Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Masters series featuring nine mandatory stops for the top players.
Here’s where the fingerprints of Flory come into play. The other eight Masters tournaments and where they are played: The Canadian Open (alternating between Montreal and Toronto), the Italian Open (Rome), Indian Wells Masters (California), Miami (Fla.) Open, Monte Carlo Masters, Madrid Open, Shanghai (China) Masters and Paris Masters.
I’m not trying to put down the Mason/Cincinnati/(Dayton) area, but who adds it to a list where even Monte Carlo might not be on top? And there used to be 13 sites. Four places were cut. Not Mason/Cincinnati/(Dayton), where the tournament is considered the oldest in the county played in its original city and is as close to downtown Dayton as downtown Cincinnati.
Flory started as a volunteer in the 1960s, at the TriState Tennis Tournament, recruiting players.
He must have been pretty good at it. From 1970-73, tournament winners were Ken Rosewall, Stan Smith, Jimmy Connors and Ilie Nastase, a Hall of Fame lineup.
It was a clay court tournament then, but changes were being made in the tennis world, and Flory was smart enough to make the right calls. When the U.S. Open switched from clay courts to hard courts, and the Boston tournament balked at doing the same, Flory saw the opportunity as director of the Tri-State to change to hard courts if the ATP moved his tournament closer to the Open.
More importantly, he convinced players the new tournament was not a place just to practice or rest, and fans that the experience of being in Mason was worth it no matter who was playing.
Both sides prospered. The championship walls are covered with names such as Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Andy Roddick, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Michael Chang, Stefan Edberg, Mats Wilander, Boris Becker, Ivan Lendl and John McEnroe — to name just a few. Flory was the tournament director from 1975 to 1997.
“He loved doing it,” said Flory’s son, Bruce, who ran the tournament for 12 years after his father was cut back by age. “He saw it as an important thing for the city. He loved everything about it. He loved the volunteers. He loved the association with the players.”
The stars came, and they found an on-site golf course and an amusement park across the street. Flory donated to a players’ pension fund. He built beautiful locker rooms and a players lounge (since named in his honor), provided cars for the players and staved off threats to move the tournament elsewhere.
“It was all about the tournament, not him,” said Phil Smith, once the tournament’s longtime publicity director.
And, it’s here. Enjoy.