Mercer Tennis Classic adds funds for its 12th iteration

When Eric Hayes moved to Macon more than a decade ago to coach tennis at Mercer, he brought more than his wife and expectations.

He had a pro tennis tournament in tow.

Back then, the tournament prize purse was $20,000, and the field had players in the top 400.

Hayes has watched that baby grow, and he marked off another notch of growth on the figurative wall, announcing on Monday what was somewhat inevitable.

The purse for the 12th Mercer Tennis Classic will be 25% bigger than the purse from the 11th Mercer Tennis Classic.

“It’s been an $80,000 event the last two years,” Hayes said. “The USTA (United States Tennis Association) recently moved us up to $100,000, which is the highest level you can be at on the pro circuit. We’ll join cities like Miami, Detroit, and Dallas in hosting one of these events.

“And, heck yeah, Macon’s in there, too.”

Hayes along with Macon-Bibb mayor Lester Miller and county tennis and pickleball manager Bobby Walker talked at a press conference Monday at John Drew Smith Tennis Center, which will be the tournament’s host for the third year.

This fall’s event, the week of Oct. 14, will be the 12th in Macon, but the tournament itself has been going on for a while. For Hayes, the next one will be his 24th.

“I was at Troy University before coming to Mercer, and we had the tournament there for 12 years,” he said. “It started as actually a $20,000 tournament.”

Upon moving to Macon, Hayes and his wife brought the tournament with them.

The first event in Macon was in 2013, the W.L. Amos Sr. Tennis Classic. It spent the first two years at the Jaime Kaplan Tennis Center at Stratford, then moved to Mercer’s LeRoy Peddy Tennis Center.

The purse was last increased by $30,000 in 2017, to $80,000. It began as the Tennis Classic of Macon.

For at least some time, it will be the top professional tennis tournament in the state.

The final Atlanta Open starts this Saturday and goes through next Sunday, at the Atlantic Station. It started there in 2010 after the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) bought the license for the tournament and moved it from Indianapolis because of low ticket sales.

It has been at multiple locations since then, including the Atlanta Athletic Club, and Racquet Club of the South.

In 2015, another entity bought the license from the USTA.

The ATP reworked future schedules and, when it came down to Atlanta or Dallas, and Dallas was chosen.

This year’s main draw includes Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe, both of notable Wimbledon performances, and nearly 20 players ranked in the top 100. Taylor Fritz won last year’s trophy.

The conclusion of that tournament opens up some potential for Macon and Mercer to attract a little bit of the purse of $756,000, $115,000 going to the winner.

A page on the USTA website indicates that Macon is in the women’s 100 category, behind only Grand Slams, WTA, and WTA 125 levels, and is one of five cities in the 100 level in the US.

The only other women’s tournament scheduled in Georgia is held in Rome, early in the calendar year. The Rome Tennis Open, at Berry College, just had its fifth event.

According to the USTA website, there is also a men’s counterpart to Macon, held in Savannah in the spring, part of the French Open Wild Card series. The 2024 event was the 14th.

The boost in purse is fitting, considering the recent exploits of assorted MTC alums.

The 2023 winner, Taylor Townsend, is the new Wimbledon women’s double champ, teaming with Katerina Siniakova to take that title Saturday. Townsend is a top-100 singles player and top-25 doubles player.

“Yesterday, she sent me a text saying that her game took off after winning here last October,” Hayes said. “And that says a lot – nothing about me – it talks a lot about the volunteers and the facility.”

Jessica Pegula, Danielle Collins, and Emma Navarro are on the U.S. Olympic tennis team for Paris. Walker noted that Pegula lost here in the first round in 2018, and is now in the top 10 in the world.

“For instance, (Jasmine) Paolini, the girl that lost in finals at Wimbledon, she played her 10 years ago,” Hayes said of the tournament then known as the Tennis Classic of Macon. “Back then, no one knew anything about her. But now, you know, look at her. My gosh, finals of the French, finals of Wimbledon.

“Right now, of the top 100 in the world, 35 of those players have played in Macon.”

Mercer was able to host the tournament after upgrades, but a major overhaul at John Drew Smith made it a natural for a growing tournament a few years ago.

“We couldn’t do that without our SPLOST funds,” Miller said. “Most people at home don’t realize that that one penny that you have creates millions and millions of dollars of economic development here in our community.

“And we’re excited about the tennis community, who is a very close-knit, very vibrant, and very outspoken group that we have in Macon that really helps our community move forward. And we’re excited about bringing new folks here to enjoy this fabulous facility.”

Miller said between John Drew Smith and the Randy Stephens Tennis Center in south Macon, the city has 55 upper-level courts. 

This year’s field will only be stronger, between the bigger purse and word of mouth.

“The way we run the tournament, the players are really taken care of,” Hayes said. “A lot of the players, even if they lose in the first round early in the tournament, spend the whole week here practicing.

“A lot of cities are decreasing the money right now and losing tournaments, and we just keep building and going up.”