 I'm Rusty Komorian. This is Beyond the Lines. We broadcast live on Mondays from the beautiful Think Tech Hawaii TV studio in the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. This show is based on my book, which is also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving greater success and sustaining that greater success, leadership and finding greatness. Today's guest is Ben Goldsmith. He is the Tournament Director for the Hawaii Tennis Open, which will feature six men and six women who are some of the best professional tennis players in the world at the Blaisdell Arena this December 21st to the 23rd. Headlining the men will be U.S. Open finalists Kayne Shikori, and headlining the women will be Wimbledon Champion and French Open Champion Garbine Muguruza. Today we are going beyond world-class tennis. Ben. Thank you. Thank you for being here and thank you for doing what you do in Hawaii. Thank you for having us. Before we talk about the big announcement that you're going to make, can you share with me some of your history growing up in Texas? Sure. Born and raised in Texas, spent all my life around Austin. My first job was Dell. Dell Computer? Dell Computers. Well, actually that's my second job as my wife would say. My first was throwing milk at Walmart, but that's a high school job. But Dell, and then that's what led me into tennis. Great. What was your official position when you were at Dell Computer? Director, I worked my way up the corporate ladder, but my last job role was Director of Sports Marketing. And how long were you in that role for? Eight years. Wow. And so, did you sponsor a lot of big pro tennis tournaments around the world? Worldwide we did over 107 tennis tournaments all over the world. Great. Wow. Now, do you play any tennis? Not much. Not much. Just with my wife. Well, when did you start getting into tennis? On a whim. Me and my best friend was actually on the way to Vegas for a boys weekend because he just got divorced and we were going to Vegas. And we got tired and pulled over in Palm Springs, California. And the next morning he had a business meeting in Los Angeles and I didn't have anything to do in Palm Springs and I was looking for something to do. So, there was this little tennis tournament which ended up being a very big tennis tournament that I attended and I noticed that all of our competition at Dell was there and we weren't. And that's what led Dell into becoming a major sponsor in tennis. Was that the Indian Wells tournament that you were saying? At that time it was the BNP Parable today and I think it was an insurance company at the time. Great. What is it about tennis that you love? There's nothing about tennis I don't love. I love the one-on-one. I love the fact that it's... There's very few sports in the world that you have nobody but yourself to blame and tennis, it's all on you. Everything is on you. It's all mental. And tennis is a mental game and I don't know how to do it but it's amazing to watch. I love tennis. You take all the blame when you lose and you take all the glory when you win. Exactly right. Now, you bought a pro tennis tournament. I did. After years of being with Dell, I saw the possibilities and thought, you know what? This looks easy. I'm just going to buy one of these days. And it's not so easy. I will say that but yes, that was the first thing I did after leaving Dell is bought a tennis tournament. We started out in Carlsbad and that led us to another one in San Antonio, Texas and we then moved Carlsbad here to Hawaii, which came to Hawaii Open at the 125th level event. Great. So let's talk about that. So you moved your tournament to Hawaii. Was that almost three years ago now? It was three. Almost. In fact, it was a little over three years ago that we were sitting at home trying to figure out what we should do with Carlsbad. We were the first WTA 125 in North America and probably crazy. We decided to do it the week of Thanksgiving in California and we thought it'll either be a huge hit or it won't. And we just couldn't get the fans to come out in Southern California for that time of year. It's just too cold. The weather's just too up and down. I know I'm saying cold in California and everybody's going to be making fun of me in 20 minutes but that's the truth. It was just too cold for the tennis fans and we were looking for a new place to put it and we were sitting at home watching Fed Cup and I couldn't believe the audience was the size for Fed Cup. On the Outer Island. On the Outer Island and I said if they can give them to go to another island when all the population is in Honolulu, this is a place for a tennis tournament and that's what started us looking at Hawaii for the future. So that's when you moved your WTA event to Hawaii and you ran the tournament for the last two years at Central O'ahu Regional Park and it was a great event. Great event. In fact the first year sold more tickets than in fact both tickets. Both years we sold more tickets than any other 125 worldwide. So our crowd size was there. We just couldn't get enough of them to come from O'ahu out to Corp. It's a drive. Yeah. And the weather was kind of tough on us at times in November at Corp. So I think it's such a great situation how and why you moved the WTA, your tournament, to Hawaii and that's going to benefit so many people in Hawaii. Tennis fans and non-tennis fans but it's going to really help tourism as well. It does and especially with the additions that we'll talk about later, the new changes coming. Yeah. We see a huge influx of tourists coming in just for the Hawaii Open. We haven't seen ever, to be honest with you, in any of the tournaments that we've run our own and what the excitement of building about this year is true and it's phenomenal the amount of Japanese tourists that are coming in for this year's Hawaii Open. Well let's talk about it right now. Let's make the official announcement then. So you have the honors to make the official announcement right here on TV. So go ahead. We are going to change from a WTA 125 event to a six men, six women Hawaii Open. With that changes we're moving to the Blades, Del Arena. We are obviously as you see on the poster adding men and the women. We have some of the biggest names in tennis playing this year's Hawaii Open and we think it'll be a huge successful event. Now I'm so excited for this tournament because in the early 90s I remember the Davis Cup coming to the big island at Mount Elani and Agassi, McEnroe and Sampras were playing against Argentina and I got excited for that. But it was on the outer island. I wish it was on Oahu. This tournament that you're bringing here, this gets me even more excited than the Davis Cup because it's six women like you said, six men and it's going to be amazing in the Blades, Del Arena. So it's not weather dependent. No weather, let it rain. The first time in the Hawaii Open let it rain. You know when we first decided to do this we wanted to bring the biggest names and we knew that was important to our tennis fans and Kay is by far one of the biggest names in tennis and Garbine's record stands for herself with two Grand Slam champions. Yeah, let's talk about Kay Nishikori right now. Kay Nishikori, his highest ranking was number four in the world. Number four in the world, he is the US Open finalist. He's the most famous athlete in Japan. Not only tennis but in all sports. Now can you tell me more about why Kay is going to be such a great draw for Hawaii? When we talked about it we wanted to make sure our number one audience of course here in Hawaii but our number two was the visitors and how do we get the visitors from Waikiki to come out. At that time we were looking at court but then we found Blades, Del and decided to do Blades, Del but we knew we needed an Asian and a Japanese tennis player is King and with Kay's resume you don't have to look at number two or number three on the list to see who you should get. Now whether we could get him at the time we didn't know but we ended up getting Kay and we see nothing but greatness coming from this. Well that gets me very excited because I love Kay Nishikori and everyone in Hawaii is going to love Kay Nishikori if they don't already but he's beaten the top players in the world. He's beaten the doll and Djokovic and Federer and all those guys so it's going to be exciting. This is real talent. These are real players and Garbine with her two grand slams. This Rick Freed's quote that will go out tomorrow on our press release says this is the best tennis players field that he's ever seen in Oahu and if Rick Sefri said it I'll take it. I agree. I had Rick Freed on my show two weeks ago and he's the chairman of the board of the Hawaii Tourism Authority and this year tournament is being presented by the Hawaii Tourism Authority. They certainly are a big sponsor and we are very thankful for the HTA. They've done nothing but good for us. That's huge support. I love hearing that. Now Ben let's talk about Garbine Muguruza. She's headlining the women. She is the 2016 French Open Champion. She is the 2017 Wimbledon Champion and she's a former number one player in the world. How are you able to get these players? You know it's not easy. It's a lot of negotiation with the players. First off it has to work and the number one thing with the players does it work with my calendar and with us moving from the court in November to the Bladesdale in December it allowed us a unique opportunity. Every player in the world is leaving most of them are in Florida during the off season doing their getting ready for Brisbane. Brisbane is a huge tournament with a lot of prize money and they're flying right across Hawaii and so it logistically made sense for us to move our dates to Christmas and get the players on the way to it's not a hard sell to get a player to come to Hawaii. It's very convenient. If it works out for their schedule then it can be done and that's why we see nothing but big names coming in the years to come for us at the Bladesdale. I think your format is absolutely brilliant having six men for example the tennis fans are going to be able to see someone like Kani Shikori at least two times rather than having someone a top seed lose in the first round and then they're done at some of these big Grand Slam tournaments. This is brilliant how you have this format. The way we got to this format was simply because of what we were selling in ticket sales at the Bladesdale it told us that hey the weekend is the busiest part that's when everybody's able to come everybody still has jobs they can't do it in the week and we thought how do we condense this down into that works for the players works for us and the fans and three days at the Bladesdale in fact we're the only invitational tournament anywhere in the world that's more than one day. Most of the exhibitions are in and out within four hours and we have all these players playing a regular style format tennis match for three days and that's not saying anything great on us it's because this time of year it's important for the players to warm up for Brisbane and that's why in fact K's people required us to have a guarantee that he would win lose or draw he will play two matches great and that's not anything besides him wanting to prepare for his the new season. Yeah so for example he's gonna be seated number one and he'll have a buy in the first round and so he'll play on the second day the semi-finals and whether he wins or loses he'll play on the third day either in the finals or for third and fourth place correct and same with the women with Garbine Muguruza but can you share some other men players that are coming for this event. Ryan Harrison a young up-and-coming American, Jared Donaldson these guys have already got a pretty decent resume behind him and we think that they have all the possibilities to break even in fact of Mackenzie McDonald he was coached by a local here in Hawaii and I wouldn't be as bit surprised if you see him go quite a ways in the U.S. Open this year. Yeah and for the women in addition to Garbine who else do you have? We have our past 2006-17 champion C.C. Bellis excuse me 2016 champion C.C. Bellis and then we have Kayla Day, Jeanne Bichard which is a phenomenal and everybody knows who Jeanne is and Christina McHale and Coco Vanderweig the biggest name in America right now besides the Williams sisters is always gonna be Coco. Yeah now the format in terms of match play is it a two out of three sets? Best two out of three but the third set is a super top rate. I like that and I like that. Makes it a little bit easier on the players and the fans and for TV purposes we know we can pretty much guarantee you how long our matches are gonna go and makes it easier for our TV partners. Yeah and then you're gonna also have a special some special exhibition matches Saturday evening that'll benefit who? The volcano relief effort we've chosen three charities look three local partners that CNN recommended and we thought you know what that's that's an easy one easy one for us we wanted to support the volcano relief effort and bringing out some of our biggest names and every ticket sold that night will go to directly to the charities. That's that's absolutely amazing and that's so great of you to do that for the volcano victims because I mean they're they're gonna be misplaced for a long time. Long time we saw the ongoing need and that's why of course we couldn't do anything at the current moment when you they need it the most but we we felt that they'll still be needing help in December and this will be years to years to come to recuperate from this. Great Ben we're gonna take a quick break and then when we come back we're gonna continue talking beyond world-class tennis. You are watching Beyond the Lines on think Tech Hawaii with my guest Ben Goldsmith. We will be back in a quick 60 seconds. Aloha my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Anna all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Hey Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii and they won't let me do political commentary so I'm stuck doing energy stuff but I really like energy stuff so I'm gonna keep on doing it so join me every Friday on Stan Energyman at lunchtime at noon on my lunch hour we're gonna talk about everything energy especially if it begins with the word hydrogen we're gonna definitely be talking about it we'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner how we can make the world a better place just basically save the planet even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore we got it nailed down here so we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energyman. Aloha. Welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My guest today is tournament director for the Hawaii tennis open Ben Goldsmith also I'd like to welcome Jared Karsten on the show he is the head tennis pro of the very popular Kailua Racket Club and he is the face and the voice of the Hawaii tennis open and today we are going beyond world-class tennis. Jared great having you here. Thanks for having me. I know you grew up in Florida but I don't know how you ended up coming to Hawaii can you tell me how your Hawaii connection happened. It's a story everybody's got their own story coming out here and you kind of realized that Hawaii was meant to be for a lot of people I left Florida to go to college out here my mom had gotten a job teaching at Hawaii Pacific University so I kind of followed her out here I'd never been came out and and within a week of moving to Hawaii I'd always I'd worked in the tennis industry through high school I looked for a local club to get involved with and found the Kailua Racket Club immediately and that was 15 years ago. Well Bruce Nagel is phenomenal with what he's accomplished and what he's still doing at Kailua Racket Club and it's I know it's a team effort can you share more about that. Yeah Kailua Racket Club wonderful it's just a hidden gem on the east side of Oahu. Bruce Nagel is the general manager and tennis director over there and took me under his wing as soon as I got there kind of saw that I had potential as a teaching pro as well as other things off the court which has led to many opportunities that that really have gotten me sitting here in this share with you a little bit that have led to get involved in tennis tournaments and being on the microphone in front of the camera and just helping spread the love of tennis in Hawaii. Yeah and at Kailua Racket Club you know you guys run some of the best local tennis events in the state can you share more about some of those specific events that you guys have there. Yeah this is it's really special we've got the Kailua night doubles the men's night doubles that happens at the end of every summer where we're coming up I think we just finished our 48th tournament coming up on 50 years here pretty soon and that gathers the best you know amateur open pro college players on Oahu for every night for two weeks it's really special one of the biggest club tournaments that you'll see in the country and we run the women's one and now mixed doubles one combined with that a couple weeks before Thanksgiving in November and we're talking about several hundred people at our club watching you know dozens and dozens of matches every night for two weeks twice a year absolutely phenomenal event and it's nothing like anything you've ever seen at a local club. You're absolutely right I love attending your events there and the Kailua racket club members are so much fun they have so much passion in what they do now I want to ask you Jared how did you connect with Ben in the in his Hawaii tennis open tournament. Well this this was pretty cool Ben when he first came to Oahu when they started talking about bringing this tournament out here I think they'd already decided to do it Ben did his due diligence and went around to all the local clubs and met with pros and GM's and just kind of got his name out there and really just kind of want to introduce people maybe make some friends. Ben and I met during one of those meetings just kind of happened and I think I reached out to him afterwards through an email and let him know that hey Ben there's there you guys may need me be in need of an MC and I may be the only person in Hawaii that regularly MCs tennis events along with my boss Bruce we do interviews and introductions and we really kind of treat players in our club event as if it's a pro tournament and we have I had some footage of that on film that I could send over to him and and he was receptive right away we set up a meeting and and that's it's kind of happened so quickly from there we've been working together ever since. So Ben for the last two years in your WTA event at Central Oahu Regional Park for the women's event you made Jared the voice and the face of the Hawaii tennis open what do you love so much about Jared? You know we thought it was important that we have a local perspective in this and there's very few people that in Hawaii and tennis that don't know who this guy is and when I heard his voice we had other announcers that wanted to do because it is Hawaii and but we just knew this was pre-beard and I said this guy's gonna be the face of the Hawaii open and I said Jared I'm a little concerned about your face on TV so this was the answer right here. That's the response. But it's a good healthy beard. Now Jared why are you even more excited for this Hawaii tennis open that's gonna be December 21st to the 23rd in the Blazil Arena what gets you more excited about this one? Well the WTA event that we ran out here the Hawaii open out of Central Oahu Regional Park already had the the high the world-class tennis that we it was just phenomenal to see that what our players did here when they went when they went out and and toward the next year they were just fantastic players now that quality of tennis is going to be raised now quite a bit and what we've got is the big names with Kay and Garbine and Jeannie and Coco this is going to be an outrageous kind of spectacle to watch in an unbelievable scenario being in Waikiki indoors there will be no weather issues like we've talked about we had in the past the fans are in for something incredible not just tennis fans this will be something that I think sports fans really fan of any sport is going to want to watch this event happen the level has always been there now we have the big names and we're just kind of doubling down on how good these players are. I totally agree with you because this event doesn't happen every day it's a once-a-year event in Honolulu this is fantastic I love this Ben now Ben there's no professional tournament in Japan at the moment no and so this will be the closest Kay we'll get to playing in Japan yeah and that's one of the biggest pluses for us to be honest with you so that that has to attract so many Japanese people that are here already in Hawaii and and in Japan wouldn't you think both we have in fact my wife told me yesterday we needed to hire some additional staff just to help out with the emails coming from Japan yeah requesting VIP packages from Japan sure and that's not a bad problem to have no I think it's also a great thing for for sponsors because this is such a special event and wouldn't you agree that sponsors would really we have seen an increase in our sponsorship sales we also believe we're still looking for the title sponsor we would love to name this anything Hawaii open of course yeah but we do see in the future years that this is helping our sponsorship sales out we think by bringing in the biggest names in tennis it certainly can't help you hurt you can you share Ben about how many TV stations this is going to be televised on worldwide sure right now in North America it's one TV channel and that's tennis channel they're having exclusive deal with us so every match will be on tennis channel in North America but for all of Asia it's Fox Sports Asia and that includes 57 different channels of different countries and then while while network in Japan we just signed a deal with ESPN International to broadcast it all with the ESPN international breach which is all South America and Europe great all total we're in a hundred and nine countries wow that's a lot that's that's a ton that's great publicity for Hawaii and for every sponsor it is and we own the the rights to that so we produce everything and everything that all the content is owned by us which most sporting events don't own them the rights to that and so it allows us to do things like the charity exhibition and put that on TV where most places just won't do that yeah I love that now Jared on Thursday that Thursday before the tournament starts on Friday there is a big program at Kailua Racket Club can you share more about what's going to be happening on that Thursday part of the kind of mini VIP experiences that are available with this tournament one of them is the program where it were a lot of the players will be at the Kailua Racket Club participating in in matches and tournament tournament style matches that the guests can play along with and they'll be kind of a clinic involved as well in that it's a big part of why I got involved in this too was it was a way to connect some of the local tennis players with a big event coming in here and also bringing what we have at the Kailua Racket Club the ability to host an event on the local level really was a big connection for us why we eventually or initially got connected yeah and and the the big Kailua men's night doubles tournament just wrapped up a few weeks ago and Henrik Bodhi and his partner wanted can you tell tell us what in addition what's going to happen for them these are our tournaments luckily been in Hawaii open look so highly at our tournaments that they've offered the winner of the men's night doubles and the women's night doubles the an opportunity to play against two of the pros from the Hawaii open in part of a charity exhibition that'll be going on Saturday night during our event yes Henrik just wanted for the third time with a third different partner these guys are as good of players as you'll we can really see anywhere in the country and I think that our top players here in Hawaii will have a chance to hang in there with some of the best pros in the world and we're gonna find out I believe so as well Ben you've been involved with so many tournaments over the years I mean everywhere what why are you even more excited about this upcoming tournament in December it's all about the future and I believe that the future looks really brought in Hawaii given the time of year that we're in it we just see no negatives for us in the future moving our dates to the December and how is it going to be more special than fans going to see a Fed Cup or the WT event a event like last year you know Fed Cup is great and we love Fed Cup we've supported Fed Cup but this is not Fed Cup this is not a three-day one match every day two matches every day this is a full-blown tournament just condensed into three days where and our players are all looking to get ready for Brisbane and that's a huge payday in Brisbane and we know they'll bring their A game and we think every year that will grow this into bigger names and possibly change a little tweaking here and there along the way but we have huge plans coming for the year after next yeah I think the potential is I mean it's limitless basically it is definitely limitless and the players love these dates that is our key win for us is the players want to come here yeah well all of my tennis students they're so excited to come to this tournament and Jared I believe how's all the club members and their kids thinking about this tournament oh with the Kailua racket club we're kind of the center of the tennis universe out here in Hawaii now our club members are so excited you figure everyone who's a member at our club is going to be there for at least one of those days all the kids are I mean this is it's a game it's a sport the kids is who are who we're thinking about and you know that they're going to be in droves they're going to be lining up to watch these are some of their tennis heroes out there I agree I want to thank you guys so much for being on the show and really making the official announcement here and we want everyone to really be excited about it in Hawaii and around the world so really thank you guys for being here no thanks for having us thank you and thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii I'm Rusty Kamori encouraging you to get your tickets for this amazing tennis event here in Honolulu and I also want to encourage you to constantly strive for a superior standard of excellence every day and to find your greatness and help others find theirs aloha