USTA clueless again!.

By Javier Palenque

When I met USTA’s CEO earlier in the year, I clearly explained to him that what the USTA focused on was not of any interest to excite people and that what tennis needed was the need to sense community, belonging, and lots of sweat. That is it. He looked at me as if I did not understand the tennis business and I looked at him knowing he did not understand the tennis business. Funny how two people have a different view from the same issue, what needs to be picked up here is that his vision is for the USTA first, my vision is for the sport first. There lies the greatest difference in perspective and effort. This is no small difference it is so big that lots of bad decisions come about not understanding this simple difference. For the readers who do not know, the USTA focuses on two things:

• The US Open
• Developing an American star

Of course in typical bureaucratic chatter the CEO defended both purposes of the organization, he said we need the US Open to help ( in fact no we don’t because all the money that they give to sections is not used for programs), the second issue of Player Development it is absurd to think you can develop a star when $250M is spent over a decade and it proves you can not. It says you do not even understand what drives an athlete to stardom. This is horrible to have the CEO be so uninformed…