John McEnroe is all business. Martina Navratilova is cool and organized. Venus Williams is sweet, polite and somewhat shy. Monica Seles is so unassuming that you’d never know she’s a superstar.

Whether they are having dinner at the Washington Street Ale House in downtown Wilmington, Del., or stretching across the courts at AstraZeneca, when major tennis stars visit Delaware, former Fightin’ Blue Hens player Jeff Harrison, BE ’93, usually is at their side.

Harrison, a co-owner of the Delaware Smash with tennis icon Billie Jean King, manages three World Team Tennis franchises. Promoting tennis in Delaware for 10 years, Harrison has met most of the headline-garnering stars.

Harrison, a standout tennis player at UD in the early 1990s, was fresh out of the business college and working in sports marketing when he first met King at a Charlotte, N.C., luncheon. “She saw that I was young and nervous,” Harrison remembers. “She did a great job of pulling me into the conversation. She saw that I sat next to her at lunch.”

Now it is Harrison who makes tennis regulars comfortable, as co-owner of the Smash, manager of the Philadelphia Freedom and the Newport Beach Breakers and vice president of league properties for World Team Tennis.

He’s worked with Navratilova on about 12 events. At first, he says, he was nervous around her because of her cool demeanor, but now he realizes she’s a consummate professional.

“She has such an aura around her. She’s not a warm and cuddly person, but, as I’ve gotten to know her over the years, she’s probably one of my favorite players to work with because she understands the big picture,” he says. “She does meet-and-greets. She understands marketing and she’s great at it.”

Harrison says the up-close John McEnroe is nothing like he appears in the broadcast booth. He’s worked with McEnroe on six or seven events over the years and says the star is so businesslike it seems like his tennis bag is a briefcase.

“He is very intense and is very businesslike at all events,” Harrison says. “It’s strictly a job with him; there is no social aspect. I tell him what needs to be done; he does it. He doesn’t say a lot of words, but he gets the job done.”

Harrison remembers that Venus Williams asked lots of questions about Delaware, what lifestyles people led and what companies were in the state. “She was sweet, polite, down-to-Earth, even sort of shy,” he says.

Harrison is on the road about 10 weeks a year, traveling to matches and to the three teams he oversees—the small-market Delaware team, the large-market Philadelphia team and the wealthy-market Newport Beach team.

King still meets with him regularly, often taking Amtrak from her Manhattan home to meet him at Smash and Philadelphia Freedom events. “She’s such a motivator,” Harrison says. “She’s always thinking of something new and different. Her mind is always so far ahead. It’s amazing to work with someone like that.”

Harrison works mostly eight-hour days during the off-season, but he’s likely to have only eight hours a day to himself during the hectic tennis season from June through early September. He says the hours don’t bother him because he has been immersed in the tennis world as long as he can remember.

Harrison’s parents, who still play tennis once a week, taught him to play when he was 6. One of the people he says changed his life is C. Roy “Doc” Rylander, the UD Hall of Fame coach who recruited him. Harrison was on the UD courts the first time he saw his wife, Mary Wolfenden Harrison, CHS ’94, who now is a tennis pro at Wilmington Country Club. Their son, Graham, 5, and daughter, Alexa, 3, already have a variety of Smash items at their home near Wilmington.

“I was a business major and I played tennis, so you combine my schooling with my passion and it just kind of jelled,” Harrison says.

He has plans for expansion and a possible off-court run for political office.

“We’d certainly like the Smash to get bigger and grow, but in a state the size of Delaware, there’s a wall you eventually hit,” he says. “But, the companies and the fan base here in Delaware have been very supportive.”

—Kathy Canavan