Rogers Cup Champion Bianca Andreescu poses with Gavin Ziv (right), then managing director of the Rogers Cup and tournament director Karl Hale after the final of the Rogers Cup in Toronto on Aug. 11, 2019. Ziv has been named the new chief executive officer of Tennis Canada.Jared Wickerham/The Canadian Press
Tennis Canada says it did a rigorous global search to replace retiring chief executive officer Michael Downey, before finding its top candidate in-house – someone whose earliest roots at the organization date back to being a ball kid in the eighties.
Gavin Ziv will be its next CEO, the national federation announced Tuesday. Ziv has spent the past 25 years at Tennis Canada, most recently working as its chief tournaments officer, spearheading its National Bank Open ATP and WTA tournaments in Toronto and Montreal.
The 48-year-old got his start in the sport even earlier – serving on the ball crew as an 11-year-old for the 1987 Canadian Open. He worked his way up through volunteer roles at the tournament each summer, then as a marketing intern, before Tennis Canada hired him full time in 1998. Since then, he’s worked on all facets of international competition, overseeing other big events such as Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup ties.
“My first experience that summer on central court had me hooked for life,” Ziv said of his boyhood introduction to a big Canadian tennis event.
“We have become a world-leading tennis nation under Michael’s excellent stewardship and I look forward to building upon his legacy by mapping out the best possible future for our sport in Canada.”
Downey announced in February that he will retire in December, 2023. Tennis Canada looked for his replacement with help from executive search firm CAA. Tennis Canada chair Peter Kruyt said the board “found exceptional candidates” from both English and French Canada, the United States and Europe.
“We could not have had a better-prepared candidate for the job,” Kruyt said of Ziv. “He’s a lifer in tennis.”
Before stepping into the CEO role, Ziv is fitting in some more learning. He enrolled at Harvard’s advanced management program, studying with 160 people from 43 different countries.
Ziv succeeds Downey, who has been Tennis Canada CEO for 15 years, split over two terms, from 2004 to 2013, and since 2017. Canadian tennis has seen a big shift in those years, with the country’s players zooming up the world rankings and becoming household names, from Milos Raonic to Genie Bouchard and Leylah Annie Fernandez. Bianca Andreescu won the U.S. Open in 2019, and Team Canada won its first Davis Cup crown in 2022.
Canada continues to have intriguing players on the ATP and WTA tours, also including Félix Auger-Aliassime, Denis Shapovalov, the budding Gabriel Diallo; and pairs U.S. Open champ Gaby Dabrowski.
Tennis competes with other sports for the attention and dollars of Canadians – both as entertainment and recreation. Downey sought to overcome the obstacle of Canadian winters to tennis participation, looking for ways to cover outdoor courts in cold months, and build new year-round facilities. He also aimed to increase revenue from its biggest tournament to reinvest in high performance and tennis development in Canada, and to grow participation for girls and women. Ziv inherits those tasks, and others.
Big changes lie ahead for its National Bank Open – its WTA and ATP tournaments which run simultaneously each August in Montreal and Toronto – and Ziv has been working on those changes. By 2025, they will expand from seven-day main-draw competitions to 12 days and stretch player fields from 56 players to 96. Tennis Canada also announced an incremental plan to close the gap in prize money between the men and women at the signature event by 2027.
Ziv has sat on boards for both the WTA and ATP. He’s one of two tournament board representatives for the new commercial arm of the WTA Tour – WTA Ventures.
“It’s our job right now to make sure we can commercialize this sport and create more revenue coming into the system,” Ziv said. “Which will be great for Tennis Canada as a not-for-profit and putting money back in the sport and also for achieving parity on equal prize money at our professional events.”
Before those changes begin, the National Bank Open will see its 2024 edition in a tough spot for players on the tennis schedule, with its hard-court tournament in Canada following right after the 2024 Paris Olympics, which will be contested on clay.
“We are working with the ATP and WTA tours on ways to customize that schedule as much as possible on the Olympic years,” Ziv said. “So hopefully more news to come on that very soon with regards to 2024.”