Roger Federer: Chris Kermode should return to the ‘mix’ after Justin Gimelstob fiasco

ATP Tour

Shahida Jacobs
May 6, 2019

Roger Federer feels the ATP Board should reconsider the decision to oust Chris Kermode as chief following the Justin Gimelstob debacle.

Men’s tennis has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in recent months as ATP Board representative Gimelstob was arrested last in October last year after attacking his former friend Randall Kaplan.

The ATP Board opted to keep Gimelstob on despite the assault charges and various calls from players to suspend him.

A few months later and the Board decided not to renew Kermode’s contract as president and chief executive beyond the 2019 season with the players’ representatives all voting against the Brit. Again, despite several high-profile players expressing their support for Kermode.

Then at the end of April, Gimelstob pleaded no contest to the felony assault charges and was handed three years of probation and 60 days’ community service.

The American finally stepped down as ATP Board member at the end of April and Federer believes the decision to oust Kermode should be reviewed.

“Yeah, I haven’t thought about it really a whole lot, about Chris’s situation because I saw it in isolation,” he is quoted as saying by Metro.co.uk.

“For Justin, you know – yeah, I mean, I don’t know exactly the process, when the votes are happening, when the new CEO, all this stuff gets decided. But he’ll probably – anyway [Kermode] maybe should be put back into the thing, you know – I don’t know what you call that – in the mix, good word.

“But then again I don’t know if he would want to be after everything that happened. Sometimes when these things happen, it is like, ‘okay, I had a good run, and it’s okay to go’. So I don’t know what – I haven’t seen Chris for some time now. I only saw him briefly in Indian Wells and I haven’t spoken to him at all so I don’t know where he stands.”

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