While state, city and tennis officials stood before cameras announcing the “highest ranking tennis tournament” to come to Hawaii, the man largely responsible was mixed among the crowd in the convention center courtyard.

When they sought to point him out and bestow his due, Rick Fried attempted to cut off the mention with an animated wave of his arm.

But just as unrelenting as Fried has been about bringing big-time tennis to the state, so, too, were his boosters Thursday.

“I’ll say it anyway,” persisted George Szigeti, Hawaii Tourism Authority president and CEO, his voice rising with determination. “He (Fried) has put tennis on our radar and is a big reason behind these two big events.”

The Hawaii Open, a Women’s Tennis Association tournament to feature 32 world-ranked players, will be played at the Patsy T. Mink CORP Tennis Complex on Nov. 20-27. The HTA is investing $150,000 in the event. It follows on the heels of the Federation Cup, which was held in Kona in February.

It is the biggest one-two of tennis for the state and “Rick Fried was the tip of the spear on this movement for us,” Szigeti said.

The 75-year-old Fried, a personal injury attorney by vocation, recalls times in the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s when Hawaii had an entry in World Team Tennis, when top players from the U.S. and Australia played here on stopovers and when Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and John McEnroe played the Davis Cup on the Kohala Coast. And he says he thought it could happen again. That it should happen. “Hawaii is ideal for this,” said Fried, who used to play Billie Jean King on local courts when she came to town in the 1960s and ’70s.

Fried captained his college team at Arizona, where his most memorable moment was losing a close match to Arthur Ashe. That also helped propel him toward a career in law, “because I knew I wasn’t going to make much money (in tennis),” Fried said.

When he was nominated to the HTA Board and, later, named its chairman, he pressed the campaign to bring events here.

In September, Fried went to the U.S. Open in New York with Ron Romano, USTA Hawaii Pacific Section executive director, to make the bid for the Fed Cup that eventually brought Venus Williams here. “He did it on his own,” Szigeti said.

Romano said, “We’ve been talking to our USTA national office for a few years about getting a Federation Cup, a Davis Cup, something. But with Rick being there and saying, ‘Here’s what we can do,’ that was a big part in finally getting it done.”

The HTA paid $100,000 to bring the Fed Cup here and with it opened some eyes. Watching the Fed Cup on TV in Texas, Hawaii Open tournament director Ben Goldsmith said he came to wonder why the state wasn’t hosting tournaments. “I knew there hadn’t been (a tournament) for a while and, from what I was seeing, there should be one there,” Goldsmith said. “I knew I wasn’t the only on thinking it and had better get moving.”

Fried could have told them as much. Instead, he just smiled.