At age 60, Steve Simon said, he had planned to spend the rest of his career as the tournament director and chief operating officer at the Indian Wells tennis event in California.
Who could have blamed him? The tournament in the desert is thriving, widely considered the best in the world after the four Grand Slam events.
But Simon’s professional path abruptly changed when Stacey Allaster made her surprise decision to resign as chief executive of the Women’s Tennis Association last month. Without summoning so much as a search committee, the WTA board of directors offered the job to Simon, a longtime board member himself, who did not take long to accept.