It's been more than four decades since Cliff Drysdale contested the 1965 U.S. National Championships final (now the U.S. Open) against Spain's Manolo Santana (Drysdale's future broadcast partner, Fred Stolle, won the title at Forest Hills the following year) but that hasn't stopped the man who has become ESPN's voice of tennis from recently earning another Grand Slam title.

Drysdale, who spends his time out of the broadcast booth operating Cliff Drysdale Tennis, his company that performs daily tennis operations and management for resorts, hotels and private tennis clubs and serves as a design and construction consultant for companies interested in building tennis facilities, has recently taken over Grand Slam Sports, a tennis consortium comprised of the  legendary players like Fred Stolle, Roy Emerson, Owen Davidson, Mark Woodforde, who conduct clinics, corporate outings and fantasy camps around the world.

In addition, CDT will manage the tennis facility for the Portones Del Mar Yacht Club & Resort, a new 140-acre resort community under construction on more than a mile of beachfront on the Punta Chame peninsula, about an hour outside of Panama City. The area is being billed as one of the world’s next great vacation destinations in the next few years.

Several weeks ago, Cliff Drysdale Tennis announced "the best weeks in tennis" for 2008 — the dates for its popular women’s fantasy camps.

The camps, held at the regal Ritz-Carlton hotels in Cancun and Key Biscayne, FL allow Cliff and his lackeys (also known as teaching pros) to coach and pamper happy campers in the lap of luxury.

The schedule opens at the Ritz in Cancun, Feb. 20-24. A limousine will ferry campers to the ritzy Ritz, and by 4 p.m., campers will already be on the court. Five-star dinners are de rigueur. Spa treatments are available each day, and nearly 14 hours of tennis instruction will be offered through the five days.

Make new friends, clock Cliffy with an overhead — a good time is guaranteed for all. The entire package costs a reasonable $1,750 for double occupancy and $2,350 for single occupancy. You can reserve a place by sending a $500 check payable to Cliff Drysdale Tennis at 601 S. Miami Ave., Miami, FL 33130. Include your E-mail, phone number and roommate if you are coming with one (Cliff and the pros are available for a fee; this writer will be your roommate for free).

And if you can’t make the Cancun shindig, fear not, Cliff is hosting a co-ed retreat Feb. 27-March 2. And if you really don’t want to see any men beside for Cliff and his pros, more ladies retreats will be held at Key Biscayne Oct. 8-12 and then again Oct. 15-19.

For more information about any of the camps, contact Tom Brownhill at Cliff Drysdale Tennis at t.brownhill@cliffdrydale.com opr at (800) 733-7987 or (305) 858-3375. 

Much has changed in the way tennis is televised over the past quarter century, but one constant amid the ongoing evolution of televised tennis has been Drysdale, who combines precise South African diction with a natural ease on air that recalls James Bond engaged in a game of backgammon. He began his broadcast career as a color analyst alongside play-by-play announcer Jim Simpson and has become ESPN's voice of tennis.

Born in Nelspruit, Transvaal in the Republic of South Africa in 1941 as Eric Clifford Drysdale, he attended college in the United States and later became a U.S. citizen. An accomplished player, Drysdale reached a career-high rank of No. 4 and became the first player with a two-handed backhand to advance to the U.S. National Championships final in 1965. A Roland Garros and Wimbledon semifinalist in 1965 and 1966, Drysdale defeated Rod Laver in the fourth round of the 1968 U.S. Nationals weeks after Laver won Wimbledon and a year before the legendary Laver would sweep his second Grand Slam. In addition to his six finishes in the top 10, Drysdale was a respected doubles player who partnered with Roger Taylor to capture the 1972 U.S. Open doubles title.

Drysdale has emerged as a prominent and respected voice of tennis, and was instrumental giving tennis players a voice in the power structure of the game. As one of World Championship Tennis' original "Handsome Eight" Drysdale was a primary player in the dawning of professional tennis. As a co-founder and the first president of the ATP, Drysdale played a prominent part in providing players with a power base within the politics of the sport and maintains unique understanding of the decision-making dynamics of the game's governing bodies.

Creativity comes to court every time Roger Federer takes the stage. As a commentator, Drysdale has chronicled the careers of some of the Open Era's best players including Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. The man who beat the only player to win the Grand Slam as an amateur and a professional believes Federer's great gifts for the game make him the most complete— and most exciting player — he's ever seen grace the court. For Drysdale, every match Federer plays is must-see TV.

"The most exciting player? Andre Agassi is certainly one of them. John McEnroe was as exciting as could be to watch, so was Jimmy Connors and I also have to mention Rod Laver, my contemporary, but the most exciting player I've ever watched, the guy I would watch and do watch every chance I get, is Roger Federer," Drysdale said. "He's the best player I've ever seen. He has a genius and a talent that is unmatched in the history of the game, in my opinion."

The veteran of the small screen has pondered the big picture of tennis' future and Drysdale believes the best way to grow the game domestically is through highly-motivated inviduals planting the seeds through community tennis programs.

"What it needs to grow is individual pied pipers," Drysdale says. "Look, you can grow tennis anywhere: give us a tennis facility —  even in some place where no one has played tennis for a long time  —  and if you put the right person in charge of that place who can energize people it will catch on because it's a great game that everyone —  kids, adults,  men and women — can play. My feeling is there are people all over this country just waiting to be invited into a tennis experience and once you get them  there you put them into the group of people who share that interest then it can grow if you issue this invitation and most importantly make it fun."

It was Drysdale who suggested ESPN hire his friend and former opponent, Fred Stolle, to work a match he couldn't cover. Stolle sat in for Drysdale and the pair would go on to share the broadcast booth with Mary Carillo forming one of the most enlightening and entertaining commentary teams ESPN has ever produced.

"Cliffy and I played in the same era. He got to the finals of the U.S. Open, lost to Santana and I think I beat him one year in the French Open semis," Stolle says. "Cliffy actually got me started in the TV business. I was working for Australian television at the time and he couldn't do a job up in Toronto and the well-known Jim Simpson was the first who started off with ESPN's tennis. So Cliff couldn't do this particular match and he knew I'd done some stuff for Australian TV so he said to the folks at ESPN 'Why don't you give Fred a shot?' So I went up and worked with Jim Simpson, which was a great experience because he's a great professional and he taught me a lot about TV. From then, we did Davis Cup ties together with Jim and Cliff in the booth and I was down at court side. And then when Jim couldn't do some events it was Cliff and myself doing that and it went on for 17 years and we had a lot of fun."

Fun continues to be the operative word in Drysdale's tennis pursuits. Tennis Week caught up with the man who makes his home on Key Biscayne to discuss his business endeavors, the threat gambling poses to the game and his thoughts on the top contenders for next week's Australian Open.

Tennis Week: Cliff, I understand your company, Cliff Drysdale Tennis, is now in charge of Grand Slam Sports, which was the company comprised of the  legendary players like Fred Stolle, Roy Emerson, Owen Davidson, Mark Woodforde and many others. What does this deal mean for fans and recreational players  who attend the clinics and fantasy camps conducted by the legends and what does it mean for your company?

Cliff Drysdale: Grand Slam Sports was owned by about 10 Grand Slam legends and that company has been discontinued and we are reinventing it with some new  faces. What we've done is have combined the more mature legends — the guys you know like Roy Emerson, Marty Riessen, Fred Stolle — with the younger players  like a Jimmy Arias or Aaron Krickstein and working with all those players, our company, Cliff Drysdale Tennis, is going to try to involve all of those  players. Our company is the direct managers of several tennis clubs like the Brickell Tennis Club in Miami and the Ritz-Carlton and a variety of other  clubs. So we've got 10 clubs that we manage, and one in Utah under development as is one in Panama, and when we put on clinics at clubs the individual clubs  will be able to draw from the pool of legendary players we have to come to their club.

Tennis Week: I know you've actually designed tennis courts for some of these clubs and one of the things I find interesting about your design is that you  don't like chain link fences —  you use natural pieces like sculpted bushes and shrubs to line the courts. Is that out of an aesthetic preference?

Cliff Drysdale: We start with the design and when we put our name on a club we want to do it right. It is aesthetically pleasing and personally I don't like  chain link fences, I don't like wind screens so I want the court and its surroundings to be beautiful for the players at a club. I've designed eight courts  and I put columns between the courts rather than netting and hedges rather than wind screens so that's exactly right: it is an aesthetic value.

Tennis Week: It's funny because I would guess most tennis fans, primarily the younger ones, know you as the voice of ESPN tennis, but you run this company,  you're directly involved in club management, you conduct fantasy camps and clinics and of course you were a top five player. What gives you the greatest  satisfaction of all your professional pursuits now?
 
Cliff Drysdale: Richard, I feel like I'm fortunate that I have a really good mix with my life with ESPN is a huge part of it obviously and still the most  challenging part of it. The Cliff Drysdale Tennis is more of a fun thing for me and a way to stay directly involved with the people who play and love  tennis. It's just interesting that there is this niche and I sort of stumbled onto it inadvertently. Tennis clubs really need good management and the sport  is helped by good management and a knowledge of how to generate enthusiasm at a club and make it fun for everyone. We took over a club in Miami and learned  they had one pro who used to do all the work: he'd give lessons, set up matches, answer the phone, do the stringing. So we came in and now we have people in  the pro shop to help the club members with equipment and stringing and six pros giving lessons. And if you do it right and it's something really, really  good then it can have a very big impact on the club. And it's also partly branding as well. The brand Grand Slam Sports is a known brand and now we can  integrate that brand and those players into these clubs. Not only in terms of fantasy camps but we do a touring camp program where we will go to a club  and put on three-day clinics for adults, kids, everyone. There is a niche for that —  not just at upscale places like the Ritz-Carlton and the Brickell Club —  but even at public facilities. So when a club has a visit from a Fred Stolle, an Owen Davidson or a Roy Emerson that can really energize the club and the  players, which of course is what we want to do.

Tennis Week: Let's talk about that idea of energizing tennis. You've played and traveled all over the world for four decades now. Obviously you live and  work in Florida, which is a tennis hotbed, but in general what does tennis need to do to  grow domestically?

Cliff Drysdale: What it needs to grow is individual pied pipers. You're right that tennis is strong in Florida, but I feel it was strong in North Carolina  when I was in Wilmington. Look, you can grow tennis anywhere: give us a tennis facility —  even in some place where no one has played tennis for a long time  —  and if you put the right person in charge of that place who can energize people it will catch on because it's a great game that everyone —  kids, adults,  men and women — can play. My feeling is there are people all over this country just waiting to be invited into a tennis experience and once you get them  there you put them into the group of people who share that interest then it can grow if you issue this invitation and most importantly make it fun.

Tennis Week: Early reports from Melbourne from the players is that the new Australian Open plexicushion surface is playing slower than the old Rebound Ace.  If in fact it is slower, who does it help? Would it help Nadal? I remember on day one of the 2007 Australian Open you said on the air "Nadal will not get to  the final" because you believed he is vulnerable to the flat-ball hitters on a hard court. Do you still feel that way?

Cliff Drysdale: I'm gonna have to reserve judgment on the surface until I actually see the court and experience it, but I still think that the issue with  Rafa on anything other than clay is getting to Federer and I still think that's true. Rafa is always going to struggle on anything other than clay. He's  definitely not just a one-dimensional player, but he remains vulnerable to the flat-ball hitters on hard courts and I don't believe he has solved that yet.  I was talking to the ESPN production team today in fact and one of the things I'd like to do during the Australian Open is to compare the players of today  with the players of years back and I want to compare Nadal to two other lefties who were Grand Slam champions: Guillermo Vilas and Thomas Muster, who were  both very similar and hit with huge topspin.

Tennis Week: That's true and I love Vilas, but I would say athletically Nadal is superior to both of those guys. Certainly he hits better on the run than  either of those two guys and in terms of his surface versatility, Cliff the guy had break points to go up a break in the fifth set against Federer in the Wimbledon final. I mean, this guy has been in two Wimbledon finals, had he pulled out that fifth set in July would you be singing a different song now?
 
Cliff Drysdale: He's a better player than either of those two guys, I agree. I believe he's always going to struggle with the fact if you do get a flat ball  hitter who has a good day against him on a hard court it's tough for him. The rest of the field has begun to figure out that you can go after his forehand,  which in my day I felt was true of the Rocket, Rod Laver. The Rocket had a little more challenging time on the forehand side because he had sort of a  continental grip and he had the same issue as Nadal with a very long swing. So if you can hit a flat ball to his forehand and keep it low and hard to his  forehand side he's going to have trouble, A. getting it back and B. when he does get it back it's going to come back to you short eventually. So I think he's going  to struggle with the field if he meets a flat hitter and remember the conditions there can be so tough: you've got extreme heat, the wind that makes the  ball fly, you've got the flies buzzing around and those things are going to be tough to overcome. His success in getting to the Wimbledon final is a bit of  anomaly because he should be vulnerable there in the same way that he is on hard courts.

Tennis Week: Andy Murray played two of the most exciting matches of 2007 in losing to Nadal in five sets at the Australian Open and beating Haas in that gripping three-setter in Indian Wells. You were there for both matches. How do you view Murray's split with Brad Gilbert? Do you look at it as Murray losing one of the most successful coaches in the game or is it a case of Murray taking ownership of his career and being confident enough in himself to step away from Gilbert?

Cliff Drysdale: The coaching thing, for me, is way overdone in terms of its importance. Getting a coach to me is like picking up a new racquet: you think 'Gee this is great!' And it's a new instrument. It's almost like playing a new game and then it gets a little old in terms of how you can juice a player up to get him to continue to play that way. I like Brad very much and I think he's a genius as a coach. In terms of whether it will hurt or help, I don't think it's going to do much of either. I do think Murray is a very talented player and I think he's poised to have a big year this year.

Tennis Week: Gasquet is such a beautiful player to watch when he's flowing yet mentally he doesn't seem to be as tough as the top guys. We saw him pull out of the U.S. Open without even giving the effort on court. How do you assess Gasquet and his shot in Australia?
 
Cliff Drysdale: Gasquet disappointed me a little bit in Shanghai. He's a great talent, but he came up against David Ferrer who beat him like a drum in Shanghai. Yes, he's a great talent, but he's not yet ready to break into the top three or four. I wasn't really impressed with the way Djokovic handled himself in Shanghai either. I realize it's a long season, he had played a lot of tennis, but this is the Masters Cup and you're facing the top players in the world and I think Djokovic chickened out a bit in Shanghai, to be honest with you.

Tennis Week: You saw Nalbandian score successive wins over Federer and Nadal and sweep Madrid and Paris at the end of the year. He showed the type of tennis  he's capable of playing. He's been in one major final before but is Nalbandian capable of getting back to a major final in '08 or do you view it as he's  just a shade below Federer, Nadal and Djokovic?
 
Cliff Drysdale: I think he's a shade below those guys, but if he's playing at his absolute best he's shown he can beat those guys. He's a tremendous talent,  but I don't think he's quite in the same class as Federer, Nadal and Djokovic —  I don't think his stroke production is as dynamic as any of those three.  That said, Nalbandian is mentally very, very strong and if he can match his physical ability to his mental ability then he certainly could do it.

Tennis Week: You've seen tennis evolve in so many ways over the years. When you look at trends that develop in the game, why do you think trends occur? Is it due to the surface? The equipment? The grips? The athletic ability of players? In other words what prompts change in playing styles and will Federer's great success spark a change in the way people play tennis?

Cliff Drysdale: It's not just the change from wood racquets to today's equipment and the surface does play a part. That's the bigger issue and what I'm struggling with is the way the game has changed so much we're at the point now where you wonder whether we can every really see another serve-and-volley player. I'm beginning to doubt it. I don't think the guys have time anymore to get inside the service line. There's only one way to play now. Even if you've got a big serve the return comes back so fast you almost have to do what Lendl started and that trend was he started to serve big and hit the big forehand as the way to win. So he showed you didn't need to serve and volley you could use the serve to set up the big forehand and then Agassi wins Wimbledon without going to the net. The pendulum has swung so far now I don't know if we'll ever see another McEnroe, Becker, Edberg or Rafter.

Tennis Week: If that's true, then it's sad to think about that sort of extinction of a style.

Cliff Drysdale: It is sad. It's very sad. I'm not even sure on a fast court if you can do it. The game is different now. A player like Pancho Gonzalez, who was obviously a tremendous player, but Gonzalez didn't have a big backhand. He'd chip it. He would just serve his way out of any trouble, chip the ball back on return and wait for you to make a mistake and then he'd jump on you. In some respect that was true of that time when you had three of the four majors on grass courts. We'd just slide the ball in, slide into the net and you could hit a "nude volley" as Fred Stolle would always call my volley that had nothing on it. The fundamentals of the game have changed so much it's very difficult to compare eras in tennis. I don't know if a balance between baseliner and serve-and-volleyer is going to come back, but I don't think watching these guys today is boring at all. I don't think the genius of Roger Federer has diminished the game one iota. The game is just different.

Tennis Week: Do you think the biggest threat to Federer right now is Federer himself? That is his ability to stay healthy and motivated or do you think a  Djokovic or Nadal can really threaten Federer's supremacy this year?
 
Cliff Drysdale: I don't think there is anyone on the horizon who can overtake him. Think about it: outside of the French Open, he's lost one match in the  majors in the last four years and that was the classic semifinal at the Australian Open when he lost to Safin and he had a match point in that match. So  when people say "Roger struggled last year..." I don't understand that. I watched Laver struggle in matches when he won his second Grand Slam (1969) and even his first for that matter. You and I have discussed this before but it's really unbelievable to think about what Federer has done. No one has ever really come close to that kind of dominance. There is no comparison.

Tennis Week: How dangerous is the gambling issue to tennis? Obviously, fixing going on in any sport threatens that sport, but what is the threat from gambling?
 
Cliff Drysdale: The gambling issue bothers me, but I think the only real issue for me is whether it affects the outcome of the matches and whether guys are  tanking matches. If it's happened — and I believe it did happen in the case of Davydenko — then whoever is responsible should be banned permanently. It's  dangerous in that it subverts the integrity whole sport, it also subverts the opportunity to get other people — sponsors — involved to take the place of  Mercedes, for instance. Why would people want to invest and be involved in a sport that's crooked? I don't think the long-term threat is a problem as long  as people understand that threat and what it means. Not only that, you can look at betting patterns and generally get a feel for whether a match is  questionable. The worst-case possible scenario is if you have Mafia-types - from whatever country they come from - threatening players and their families.  That worst-case scenario is scary and I think there is potential for that and that's why it's important to nip it in the bud and issue lifetime bans for  anyone found guilty of match fixing.

 
Tennis Week: The United States Davis Cup team put so much effort into recapturing the Cup and of course did so emphatically just a month ago. Do you think all the effort they put in and the fact they played into December is going to take a toll on these guys in the first month of the new season or can that inspire them and re-energize them.

Cliff Drysdale: I think its a huge help for everyone on the team. I think Patrick did an unbelievable job. I think they're going to stay committed to Davis Cup. They've still got another hill to climb to win on clay when they defend it this year. To answer your question directly: I think it was a very inspiring effort by the team, a wonderful way to finish off the year and I think it will be a huge plus for everyone starting the 2008 season.