Unless there is a dramatic late change of heart, the new chairman and CEO of the ATP World Tour will be named this week and - as The Times indicated in an interview with board member Justin Gimelstob a week before Christmas - that man is Adam Helfant, a former Nike executive and alumnus of Harvard which proudly boasts of itself as "the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States".

Which not only marks out Helfant as a pretty intelligent man who might have a decent stab at unravelling the complexities of the tennis world, but confirms that if it is a tennis executive you want, then the educational flower of Massachusetts, is the place to start looking.

The 44-year-old will join fellow former pupils Larry Scott, the CEO of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, Jim Curley, the tournament director of the US Open and Bill Babcock, the daddy of them all, who has been involved in professional tennis for 24 years, the last 18 at the helm of the International Tennis Federation, who has made the shrewd governance of the sport something of a speciality and been a quiet but hugely effective force as the grand slams have cemented their position as its four pillars.

It is the first time, for sure, that four men who attended the same school have attained such positions of power in tennis - and clearly with Helfant joining Scott as the driving forces of the men's and women's games, the Harvard influence will be enormous. It would fun to be in the same room when they first meet the formidable Babcock. They may be unconnected co-incidences but they go to the heart of what it takes these days to govern a sport. A lawyer's training will come in very useful if there are to be more calendar shifts and upset tournament directors who threaten legal redress.

According to the Sports Business Journal, when Helfant went off to college, it was not with the intention of becoming a lawyer but he ended up at a New York law firm after his Harvard stint, got recruited to the National Hockey League after four years and joined Nike's legal department in the mid-1990s. "Having distinguished himself as one of the sharper minds at a time when Nike was experiencing unprecedented growth, he was elevated to vice president of US sports marketing earlier this year," it is reported.

While Helfant held one of the most powerful jobs in sports marketing, getting him to talk about himself was nearly impossible. When sports executives who worked with Helfant were asked to describe him, their recollections all started with the same word: Smart.

"He is as thorough and as attentive to detail as any person I have worked with in this industry," said Tim Brosnan, Major League Baseball's executive VP of business, who worked with Helfant on MLB's apparel licensing deals. "Adam's style is completely the opposite of the constant one-upmanship you see in this industry," Brian Jennings, NHL group VP of consumer product marketing said. "He lets everyone else talk a lot, then he just goes out and cuts a better deal."

Phil de Picciotto, of Octagon and a man of vast experience in tennis - he used to represent world No.1 Steffi Graf - says that simply being a Nike man (i.e. someone who has probably helped draw up the deals with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal) is not the reason why Helfant has been appointed. "Adam was the ideal candidate because he is an outsider but has been very connected to the game and while American, he has a world view and he has had major input in the marketing of a world brand. Plus he had the trust of the top players." De Picciotto said.

There is much to be done - not least attempting to secure a deal to find a lead sponsorship partner for the ATP World Tour, after Mercedes withdrew it support from the start of the year. And one wonders what kind of deal the ATP has had to come up with to get its man.

As CEO of the WTA, Scott earned $1.6 million in 2008, a 62% increase over two years which meant he was one of the highest paid executives in women's sports. Etienne de Villiers, whom Helfant replaces at the ATP, was paid $1 million in 2007, up 33.3% from 2006. Total expenses rose to $61.3 million from $47.6 million in 2006. At the same time, revenue rose to $60.3 million from $55 million. Flip Galloway, the Chief Operating Officer of the ATP World Tour, earned $495,275 in 2007 while marketing executive Phil Anderton made $485,087.

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Kris Dent, the ATP's head of corporate communications, leapt swiftly into action after last week's first Net Post of 2009 cast doubt on the fairness and viability of the new ranking system on the men's tour and that it favoured those at the top end of the scale rather than the bottom. He suggested that I was the unfair one.