King of the Court

Yes. When, in the span of six months, you purchase a team for a sport no one's ever heard of and build a stadium in the middle of a parking lot in downtown Washington, you are the captain. You are also the first mate, cruise director, deckhand and the team's biggest cheerleader.

* * *

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a sports team.

On the usual list of desirable franchises for a man of means to purchase, World TeamTennis is near the -- well, actually, it is unclear whether the WTT is even on the list of desirable sports franchises.

It's been around at a professional level for nearly 30 years but has just 11 teams nationwide, and one of those teams is in Springfield, Mo. The rules (different from traditional matches) and the vibe (raucous cheering encouraged) are baffling to newcomers. Not every team makes it: The Houston Wranglers folded last year.

Generally, it works like this: A bunch of talented pro players you've never heard of take time in July to make some extra cash and get some exposure. Because average folks don't typically want to shell out good money to see people they've never heard of, each team also gets a "marquee" player, who is required to play only a portion of the matches.

Career- and talent-wise, marquee players are all over the map, ranging from peak (Serena Williams) to passe (John McEnroe) to useless but hot (Anna Kournikova). Because average folks still might not shell out good money (tickets start at $40) for a sport that does not involve cheerleaders, the WTT has added: 1) cheerleaders; 2) a halftime show, involving Wii tennis tournaments and fan games; 3) the "We Will Rock You" headbanging soundtrack prevalent at most football and basketball games.

On court, players range from seeming juiced by the attention to deeply saddened by the state of their sport.

A person who takes on the endeavor of owning this enterprise should have the resources and desire to live and breathe tennis for the duration of the season, which is, granted, only three weeks long.

Ein, 43, is an uber-businessman who appears in the society pages of Capitol File and Washington Life. He has a vaguely familiar name and an unremarkable face that you feel somehow inadequate for not recognizing. His friends are other businessmen with their own sports teams, like Leonsis and Wizards co-owner Raul Fernandez.

Ein captained his tennis team at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. He's played pro-am tournaments. Studied finance at Penn, had a stint at Goldman Sachs, then earned an MBA at Harvard. He became a principal at the Carlyle Group during those last heady days in the late '90s, when a person's net worth was like a parade -- six figures, seven figures, marching on to eight! In 1999, he went out on his own and started Venturehouse Group, an investor in XM Satellite Radio. In 2002, he decided to buy the R Street mansion of the late Katharine Graham, which had been listed for $8.35 million. His Capital Acquisition Corp. completed a $262.5 million initial public offering last November.

One of these days, he says, he'll move in to that house; the plans have all been drawn up, two sets of them. He's been busy, mostly with business but also with charity, with the National Gallery of Art and the SEED Foundation, and then the NIH foundation and Federal City Commission. He sits on the board of the Tennis Center at College Park. When a tennis pal mentioned World TeamTennis to Ein, and when he hit it off with WTT founder Billie Jean King, he had a vision: