Micky Lawler
President of the WTA and first agent of tennis players
Micky Lawler (Eindhoven, 61 years old) is a pioneer in representation and management in tennis, fields traditionally reserved for men. She began her career in 1986 as a communications liaison for the Men’s Tennis Council, predecessor of the ATP Tour. In 1988 she joined Advantage International, now Octagon, where she was the first female agent for tennis players such as Alberto Mancini, Richard Krajicek, Paul Haarhuis and Amelie Mauresmo. In 2015 she made her debut as president of the WTA, the women’s tennis association. A certified interpreter and linguist, she speaks five languages: English, Dutch, French, German and Spanish. She and she has lived in South America, Central America, Europe, Africa and the United States.
“I felt like I had won the lottery, because I was 25 years old and I spent 48 weeks traveling a year, helping the tennis players in the press. I had a close relationship with the tournament directors and that’s when I began to learn about the tennis business”, he explains to AS Lawler, the architect of the expansion of the WTA in China. “I attended 100 interviews and they told me that they preferred to hire a man, because a woman my age was going to have children and want ‘maternity holidays’, what an absurd concept,” recalls Micky, who felt it was “a great responsibility”. open the way for other women in the representation of athletes. Today she dreams of a united tennis. “The future is a single organization.”