TOPGOLF AND THE BRILLIANT USTA LEADERSHIP

By Javier Palenque

Miami January 2, 2023

Yesterday my kids and a bunch of their friends decided to have an afternoon at TOPGOLF, the business with revenues over $1B that is owned by golf giant Callaway. Just imagine having multiple kids from ages 12–18, it’s a hoot. We checked in on the red carpet and had a wonderful few hours of fun, food, and camaraderie over sodas, burgers, and fries. None of us are any good at golf, as most of our kids are tennis players or ballet dancers. The place was packed, the music fun and we gladly spent a few hundred dollars in the name of fun.

As I promised to write one article per week to undress the USTA leadership of its sheep’s clothing I thought, this business took 20 years to crystallize and now makes solid money for several years. Then I thought, what can I teach the brilliance-deprived USTA executives about this silly experience and make my normal brilliant points that they purposefully ignore? The fact is though that my points are so smart and so on the money that even though they pretend not to read my articles and pretend to ignore me, denying them becomes even more proof of just how limited and obtuse their minds are. And to think that the board is happy to pay $88M per year in payroll for this level of brain trust for a two-week show that uses tennis and is not tennis?