Saddlebrook’s Winning Combination

When Saddlebrook Resort opened a quarter century ago, there was no mistaking what it was. It was a resort designed for meetings. Exclusively. Nearly 500 rustic, Wesley Chapel acres – about 30 miles north of Tampa International Airport – devoted to the care and comfort of corporate America away from home. Plenty of places to meet, eat, sleep, schmooze and play.

Fast forward 25 years. More than 80 per cent of its business is still conferences – on average between 450 and 475 a year, ranging in group size from 10 to nearly 900. From Heineken and Harlequin to ITT, Nestle-Purina and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

But the differences are as notable as they are noticeable: the Arnold Palmer Golf Academy; the Harry Hopman Tennis Academy; a 270-foot-long, 500,000-gallon SuperPool; 45 tennis courts; a luxury spa; a five-acre, wooded team-building venue; a prominent sports village and fitness center; and more than 250 private homes, such as the one that Jennifer Caprioti is building on bucolic Fox Hunt Drive. And the (pooled condo) accommodations now number 800 guest rooms and one-, two- and three-bedroom suites. Wireless, high-speed internet access is ubiquitous. The ranks of employees have swelled to 850. There’s even a fully-accredited (K-3) school, Saddlebrook Preparatory.

“We’re a resort first,” emphasizes Alberto Martinez-Fonts, Saddlebrook’s director of marketing, advertising and public relations. “We are a local business driven by large corporations.”

But while meeting planners have Saddlebrook on speed dial, it’s golf and tennis that have given the resort its international renown. From early on, Saddlebrook has been much more than well-regarded camps and clinics. It’s been a legend magnet.

There are the iconic names of (the late Australian Davis Cup captain) Hopman and Palmer, and the latter’s two signature courses plus a host of tennis luminaries who have learned and lived here. To name-drop a few, in addition to Caprioti: Pete Sampras, Jim Courier, James Blake, Martina Hingis and Justine Henin-Hardenne. There are also the surfaces, which replicate those of all four Grand Slams: Har-Tru, Deco-Turf, grass and clay. Saddlebrook is also the official resort of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).

You never know who you’ll find hitting – or living – here. And you never know who you’ll find that may be tomorrow’s Tiger Woods or Roger Federer.

There’s even a chance that they are among the 132 students enrolled at Saddlebrook Prep. About 45 per cent are from overseas – from Venezuela to Vietnam. Approximately 60 per cent of the students (grades 7-12) combine academics with an intense focus on tennis instruction, the remainder on golf. Classroom ratios are about 10:1. Room, board, tuition and instruction runs $37,500 per year.

Headmaster Larry Robison pointedly notes his school’s priorities.

“Our mission is to prepare them for college,” states Robison, a former principal at Zephyrhills High School. “And we support the sports endeavors. In that order.”Indeed, he has the numbers to underscore his point. Nearly 95 per cent of Saddlebrook grads earn college scholarships.Cole Conrad, 17, an 11th grader from Fairfield, Conn., expects no less.

“Connecticut in the winter isn’t exactly ideal for tennis,” he says. “Here I get to play all the time, and I like the mix of coaches. I’m probably three times better than when I arrived (the previous year). I’m hoping for a scholarship; preferably here in Florida.”

The National Amateur Hour

A recent “Newsweek” poll indicated that a majority of the public – 58 per cent – believes the firing of those eight U.S. attorneys was politically motivated.

Question: Given that all such U.S. attorneys serve at the “pleasure” of the president, why wasn’t the poll response 100 per cent?

Isn’t this debacle a subset of the sausage metaphor? Some things – such as the passing of laws, the editing of news, the making of sausage – you just don’t want to see? The process is never pretty, especially the one at the Justice Department that’s always rife with political agendas and chronic cronyism.

This is another installment of the White House Amateur Hour. An Administration utterly unsuited to deal with oversight in the new Democratic, subpoena-empowered Congress. Not even resident sage Fred Fielding could deter them from the clichéd, passive-voiced, pseudo mea culpa: “mistakes were made.”

And, realistically, if the White House is forced to dump its clueless, Texas-loyalist Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who does the president send over to satisfy Sen. Patrick Leahy’s Judiciary Committee? Is Ramsey Clark available?

The Bong Show

Lighten up, America. It’s a prank. And a fairly funny one at that.

The U.S. Supreme Court is now considering the merits of Morse vs. Frederick. Deborah Morse is a high-school principal who contends that a student’s 14-foot banner proclaiming “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” was an unacceptable pro-drug message. She suspended its creator, Joseph Frederick. He sued, saying his free-speech rights were violated.

A decision isn’t expected until July, but the Court may be well advised to give more than lip service to the argument of Justice David Souter, who said: “It sounds like just a kid’s provocative statement to me.”

Indeed. Too bad common sense and a heart-to-heart chat between principal and student didn’t trump the trivializing of the First Amendment.

But the principal says Frederick’s drug message crossed the line. But a non-obscene, less-than-inciting, goof-on-the-establishment sign? That’s not even one toke over the line.

Crime Waived

Tampa’s declining crime rate — 36 per cent over the last four years — was a linchpin in Mayor Pam Iorio’s recent State of the City address. Now that drop has been noted in the March-April issue of AARP magazine, which lists 10 cities “where your chances of running into a criminal decreased in the past five years.” The 10 “most improved” included Tampa at number 2.

Energy Irony

“Oil-Rich Nations Turning Attention To Alternative Fuels” read recent headlines across the country. The main, but hardly exclusive, focus was on the United Arab Emirates, the number four OPEC producer, and what it was doing to reduce demand for fossil fuels internally.

In a Manhattan Project-like strategy that puts a premium on applying the sun, the wind and hydrogen to domestic energy needs, the UAE hopes to save more high-value fossil fuels for export to markets such as the U.S.

The UAE also knows its oil won’t last forever. Yet it wants its luxurious, even sybaritic, lifestyle to survive in perpetuity. Hence its serious, prioritized approach to energy conservation at home.

Anyone else see an irony here?

Iranians Claim Insult

This just in. Iran is insulted by the American movie “300” and is officially complaining about disparaging depictions of Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

And this from a country that still owes us an apology for holding American embassy employees hostage and threatening them with mock executions in 1979-80.

Maybe Hollywood would ante up if Iran would formally acknowledge that hostage-taking is always poor form and in the scheme of things much more offensive than unflattering movies. And then apologize.

Absent that, Iran can just make do with all those bootleg DVDs that young Persians will still watch — decadent and evil stereotypes notwithstanding.

Mayor Iorio Upstages Her Own Good News

In her annual State of the City address, Mayor Pam Iorio reported that the state of the city remained good. Crime, which has increased alarmingly in cities such as Orlando, continues downward here. More buildings are up, and a bunch more are on the way. The words downtown and revitalization no longer seem incongruous. And more attention is being paid to places such as East Tampa, Tampa Heights and the Central Park Village area.

Another State of the City presentation, another day at the office in Pamelot.

And another high-energy, “pulse of the city,” greatest hits video that Director of Public Affairs Liana Lopez labors so hard over. Somehow finding, for example, just the right up-tempo music to complement footage of road widenings and drainage upgrades.

But for a time there was only sound – no video to project on those large screens at the Tampa Convention Center. It probably took 7-8 minutes to fix. If you’re the main presenter, it can seem like a light year. If you’re a chief executive, you’re used to making the tough calls and managing on-the-job crucibles. But a missing or malfunctioning stage prop can be the real mettle detector.

Cue Mayor Pam.

Even her harshest critics acknowledge her formidable podium skills. She rhetorically tap danced and ad libbed her way through the awkward interlude by whimsically referencing everything from the ACC tournament to “Cigar City Chronicles” to the Strawberry Festival.

After the presentation, the exiting audience of city personnel and local politicos were more abuzz about the mayor’s stage presence than that overall 9.4 per cent drop in crime the last year, which included an 18.5 per cent decrease in the violent stuff.

The state of the mayor, who almost pitched a shutout in her recent re-election, is also good.

NCAA Bids: Earn Them

Every year, it seems, the basketball tradition known as “March Madness” includes tales of woe and crushing, disillusioned disappointment: teams that barely missed the cut for the 65-team “Big Dance.” This year that includes the Florida State University men and the University of South Florida women.

Without getting caught up in the esoterica of weighted schedules and RPIs and all that, let’s at least acknowledge this: If there are more than a half dozen teams in your own conference that are better than you, what are you doing in a national championship tournament anyway? Shouldn’t selection mean selective?

Time was when only a conference winner went to the NCAA Tournament. Period. Or only a conference tournament winner moved on.

Back in the day, the biggest obstacle to a Jerry West-led West Virginia team making the NCAAs was the Southern Conference Tournament final with tiny Davidson. It was great hoops and great drama. And occasionally Davidson slew Goliath.

The problem now is there are too many teams from the big-name, big-budget conferences in the tournament — and in a game of increasing parity not nearly enough Valparaisos, Vermonts, Butlers, Belmonts, Evansvilles and Bucknells.

You want to make the Big Tournament? Earn it. Don’t be an also-ran in your own — however big the name — conference and then complain because it’s embarrassing to the administration, alumni and fans to miss a bloated, 65-team tournament.

Rock and Rap?

Say it ain’t so.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was kick-started by the likes of James Brown, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino and the Everly Brothers, has now inducted its first rap group, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Jose Canseco being enshrined in Cooperstown makes more sense.

Even if you choose to overlook rap’s insidious impact on the culture as a paean to crotch-grabbing, misogyny and all manner of dysfunction, there is this:

Shouldn’t the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s criteria include, if not mandate, being able to carry a tune or play an instrument?

Chase Reality

Chase policies – as in whether police can pursue stolen cars – is an ongoing and understandably controversial issue among police departments. Tampa (yes) and St. Petersburg (no) would be prime examples. The downsides of a pro-chase policy are obvious, sometimes tragically so.

Often overlooked, however, is the reality that unchased stolen cars have more than their share of accidents, including fatal ones. The nature of drivers of stolen vehicles is to be preoccupied with matters other than prudent driving.