How can this be USTA?…………………. By Javier Palenque

Earlier in the week I received the Tennis Industry United report in which the USTA proudly reports that thru no programming, no investments, no ideas on how to grow the game, no brilliant hires but thru the century’s deadliest pandemic the game had grown 22% in areas where the USTA never invests (parks). According to them an increase of 17% in adult players and an incredible 37% in youth players. If anything this tells me that of course increase in play has to take place in parks as they are underutilized and are free. For the past 3.5 years I have been asking for investments in this particular area to provide the opportunity for all kids to play our wonderful sport. Now of course with the pandemic it would have been great to have programs in place to actually capture the wave of potential players coming into the game and not be late to this once in a lifetime situation. This is called management myopia. That failure is what happens when company leaders define their mission too narrowly. It is a form of business nearsightedness whereby companies focus on selling products and services, rather than seeing the “big picture” of what consumers really want.

However, that is not the main reason why I chose to wake up early and write a few lines. The reason I did is to look closely at one metric given by the USTA and ask yourself, how can this be? The metric is ball…