by Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
Journeymen tennis players need help…even in retirement.
Former ATP tennis pro Geoff Grant, who with a career high ranking of No. 109 and notoriety for losing five-set matches at the US Open to both Gustavo Kuerten and Oliver Gross more than classify him as a tennis tour journeyman, is working on a crowd-sourcing campaign to raise funds to have his 2001-released tennis documentary “The Journeymen” transferred and distributed digitally. (See details on how to help and contribute to the effort and receive perks here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-journeymen-tennis-movie-move-to-digital-project#share)
The movie is a cult classic of sorts in the tennis world and a one-of-a-kind documentary featuring a behind-the-scenes look at life on the men’s pro tour shown through the eyes of Grant and Mark Keil, his fellow journeyman pro. “The worst player to ever beat Pete Sampras” is how Keil is billed in the film, referring to his 1991 upset of Sampras, on a grass court of all places, at the Queen’s Club even in London in 1991. Grant and Keil began documenting their life on tour at the start of the 1999 ATP season in Auckland, New Zealand at the first tournament of the year.
“He had some amazing stuff from the locker room of Tim Henman and Goran Ivanisevic,” Grant said. “We watched it in the hotel room and the light bulb kind of went off. We realized that the marketing of tennis could always use some help and I encouraged him and pushed him to keep filming. The whole spirit of the filming was to ultimately try to make a documentary film of the year in the life on the tour in tennis, kind of in a similar fashion of the ‘Endless Summer’ movie that shot about surfing. That movie was kind of our muse. We wanted to create an “Endless Summer for Tennis” and hopefully create a cult classic.”
“We were just trying to raise awareness for the sport because it was stagnant,” continued Grant. “The prize money and the business did not grow for the eight years I was playing on tour. I would go to the same tournaments and make the same. I would go to the same Grand Slams and make the same money. The business was not growing, based on those metrics. I wasn’t seeing any growth. Therefore, we felt we had to try to do something about it”
Keil and Grant continued filming week after week on tour and began to piece together their concept. Their fly-on-the-wall presence in locker rooms, parties, hotel rooms and practice courts captured intimate moments among the stars – and the journeymen players – and how they coexist in this global traveling circus. There was no script and interviews and conversations are raw and captures a feel of reality TV in one of its earliest forms. Some of the most memorable scenes include Keil’s adventure playing doubles with Goran Ivanisevic at the Australian Open, his crazy adventures in India and Uzbekistan with Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Greg Rusedski as well as Grant facing a stone-faced Jim Courier in Memphis and Andre Agassi discussing pre-match sex.
“We just wanted to capture as much of a flavor of the tour as possible,” said Grant. “We wanted to document as much as our experiences from the journeymen’s perspectives where we are not making a ton of money but we are living in the show and rubbing shoulders with all the top guys. We have the relationships with the top guys and they are going to treat our camera differently, which they did.”
“We thought it was important for the tennis world to get some recognition outside of the sport, in another arena, which was the movie world,” Grant continued. “Ultimately, we could hit an home run, and win award, raise the level of awareness of the ATP Tour and create a cult classic in the process.”
Not knowing anything about filming or video production, Grant and Keil would schmooze with TV personnel at tournaments to get them to help them piece together some of their footage to make a trailer based on the footage they got so they could work to convince a TV network or film company to invest in their project.
“We were scrapping and clawing,” Grant said. “We didn’t know what exactly what we were doing we just knew we really wanted to get this project done.”
Eventually, they caught the attention of RDF Media in London, who saw the footage, believed that it could be an excellent product and sold rights to the film to British television. With the money that was gained from the rights sale, RDF, Grant and Keil produced and edited the film into its final form in a month.
“I think that the players really never thought that it would ever become anything,” laughed Grant. “That is probably why we got such candid responses from these guys. It was like we are filming a home movie, not something that would be broadcast around the world. And let me tell you, some of the stuff we left on the cutting room floor most definitely shows just how relaxed some of these guys were in front of our cameras…”
After airing in the United Kingdom, it was also sold to the Tennis Channel in the United States, 11 other countries world-wide, and eventually released as a DVD. Sports Illustrated went as far to describe the work as “one of the more audacious sports documentaries in recent years.” With the media world becoming more and more digital, where movies are ordered on demand from TVs, IPads or other mobile devices, Grant decided he wanted to try and make “The Journeymen” available digitally for a new generation of tennis fans to enjoy more easily.
“Certainly in today’s day and age, access to compelling video, whether it be on YouTube, digital downloads or short viral videos from Facebook, Twitter or Vine, is accessible instantaneously, so I would love to see our product be available in a digital format so it can live on,” said Grant. “It’s still my dream to undercover so much of this old footage that didn’t appear in the movie and has not seen the light of day. With the ease that we can outlet this footage nowadays is, it’s a new development that can breath some life the film. We have just incredible moments with a super star players. If we can get some traction with this movie now, we may be able to get some interest in all of the outtakes.”
Unlike so many Hollywood films, “The Journeymen,” however, does not necessarily have a happy ending. It not only reflects the glamour of the tour and the global travel, but showcases the down times as well. Grant and Keil face their tennis mortality throughout the film while Keil’s inner demons are also on full display. The end of the movie showcases one of the duo’s final events in Key Biscayne where they have to beg, plead and try to negotiate and shuffle their way into the doubles qualifying draw. Ironically, the scenes from Key Biscayne also feature aging tennis legend Boris Becker, also playing the waning events of his Hall of Fame career. Fans, if they look closely, can also get a glimpse of a young Roger Federer in the locker room. Following their first-round doubles loss in qualifying, Keil is seen in drinking binges that results in him being kicked out of his hotel room.
“That was reality,” said Grant. “That was what was happening at that time. Unfortunately, we didn’t have footage from the previous year when we were both grinding our way up the totem pole, killing ourselves in South America, India, Africa, and all the hard work and blood sweat and tears we shed to quote ‘make it’ on the tour. The movie doesn’t show the hard work.”
The end of the movie shows Grant and Keil pondering the questions that face them as they near extinction from pro tennis.
“There is a ‘What will they do now?’ element to the end,” said Grant. “That’s a reality that many, many former athletes and certainly tennis players face when they reach the end of their careers. They haven’t made the money that you are going to retire on. What do you do? It’s not always pretty and we certainly capture that.”
Following the movie’s release, Grant and Keil drifted apart and Keil struggled to find his place in his post-ATP career.
“I always used to say to him that he was going to become a plumber one day,” joked Grant.
Keil eventually retreated to Hawaii to teach tennis and was last heard to be in China as a tennis instructor. Grant said had not spoken to him or heard from him in about two years and said that Keil had virtually disappeared from many people’s lives.
“I think Mark’s life beyond the movie and beyond tennis had proven to be a struggle,” said Grant. “He’s struggling to this day. That’s real.”
Grant parlayed the initial attention of “The Journeyman” into tennis commentating roles for the Tennis Channel and the world TV feeds for the US Open and the ATP Tour. However, Grant chose not to stay in the television world for long, recognizing that his name was not big enough to move him beyond “journeyman” television commentator status. He served stints in business at SAC Capital in Connecticut and The Cordish Company, a nationally recognized real estate developer in Baltimore, before returning to his love, tennis. He is now the director of tennis at CourtSense at Tenafly Racquet Club in New Jersey and is married with a two-year-old child.
