Chronicle of a Death Foretold

by Javier Palenque

Gabriel Garcia Marquez a Colombian Nobel laureate wrote this famous novel circa 1981, for those interested should read the novel, at my high school it was required reading. I decided to take the words of Marquez’s book title to write on the eve of tennis history, to make sure that we in the United States understand what is happening with tennis under the incapable USTA. While I would like Novak to win the Grand Slam, we will all get easily confused about what the US Open is and then think of yesterdays’ teen final and today’s celebration and wrongly conclude that tennis in America is fine. I am here to bring some gravitas to this discussion and out the most incapable sports organization in the world, the USTA. The year has 52 weeks, the US open is 2. I care about the 52 weeks for all tennis people. If you follow me you will know that I have been wanting to have a board meeting with the leaders and at all times I have been denied, and repeatedly ignored. You see my intentions are very simple: to make this $485M per year nonprofit accountable to its declared mission. Something no one does and as they say within the closed doors of the USTA, “ we have the sport locked tight and we can do whatever we want, the noise will go away”. To this level of arrogance and incompetence, I say, no you can’t.