Who is Justin Gimelstob: The networking king who has risen to the top of the ATP
During this year’s first Wimbledon semi-final in July, BBC viewers could hardly help but notice the tall figure in a blue suit who kept rising from his seat at courtside to offer intense, fist-pumping encouragement to the USA’s John Isner.
This was Justin Gimelstob, a familiar figure to anyone who follows the international tennis circuit, or watches the Tennis Channel’s coverage, where he is a presenter and commentator.
A man with many hats, Gimelstob has coached Isner in the past, and maintains a close relationship with several American players. But his greatest influence stems from a decade spent as one of the six men on the Association of Tennis Professionals board.
The son of an insurance magnate from Newark, New Jersey, Gimelstob is the middle of three brothers who all played tennis to a high standard. He is now 41, while Russell – a hedge-fund financier – is 39. Eldest brother Josh has had his own run-ins with the law. In 1996, Josh pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. He had driven into a policeman who was warning him to slow down, carrying him 30 feet along the road before eventually stopping his Jeep Cherokee.
Justin Gimelstob has described himself as no more than “a serviceable player”, though he made above $2m in prizemoney and won 13 ATP doubles events, plus two major mixed-doubles titles alongside Venus Williams. After his retirement from professional tennis in 2007, he appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman – a rare honour for even the most celebrated players, and a good indication of his strong network of connections and allies. From there, Gimelstob moved into the commentary box and was soon demonstrating a knack for controversial statements, none of which arrested his progress through the higher echelons of the sport.
In 2008, he made disparaging remarks about the Russian player Anna Kournikova to a radio station in Washington. "I just despise her to the maximum level below hate,” he said, while describing the young French player Alize Cornet as a “sexpot” and Czech teenager Nicole Vaidisova as “a well-developed young lady”.
The same year, Gimelstob told Out magazine, with apparent relish, that “The locker room couldn’t be a more homophobic place. We’re not gay-bashing. There’s just a lot of positive normal hetero talk about pretty girls and working out and drinking beer. That’s why people want to be pro athletes!”
Gimelstob apologised profusely for the Kournikova comments (the Out magazine article failed to draw much response), and promised to make a donation to the Women’s Sports Foundation. But the tennis world tends to be conservative – especially in the USA – and many male players saw him as a straight talker, someone they could relate to. So it was that, in 2008, Gimelstob joined the ATP board as one of three player representatives. “He is very loud and energetic, and maybe you like it or don’t,” the former world No. 3 Ivan Ljubicic has said. “The board meetings were never very quiet when he was around.”
Gimelstob’s other prominent connections include his role as the manager of Lindsay Davenport, the broadcaster, coach and three-time slam champion who won Wimbledon in 1999. In the mid-Noughties, he also became close to Corina Morariu, the Romanian-American player who won the Wimbledon doubles with Davenport that same year. According to Morariu’s autobiography, Living Through the Racket, they were an on-off couple for three-and-a-half years. “The rapid-fire, back-and-forth nature of this ‘amour fou’ was too confusing for even me to follow,” Morariu wrote. “The fighting, the making up, the breaking up, the getting back together.”
Within the circle of American tennis, Gimelstob’s connections are everywhere. Max Eisenbud, who is not just Maria Sharapova’s agent but now the joint head of the IMG tennis operation as well, initially chose his career path on the advice of Gimelstob, who had been a childhood friend. The same networking skills extend to the leading players – especially those on the ATP player council – on whose behalf Gimelstob has campaigned energetically for increased pay. This is a man who knows everyone. But as he prepares for his court hearings, many will be asking how well they knew him in return.
