Yesterday, I described my efforts to understand how senior competitive tennis fits into the Australian tennis system, hoping to learn something about Craig Tiley’s priorities during his tenure at Tennis Australia. My theory is that understanding that might shed insight into how he will approach senior tennis as the new CEO of the USTA.
I found more evidence of support for senior competition than I had expected. I also stumbled across an interesting episode in the relationship between Tennis Australia and Tennis Seniors Australia (TSA).
In 2019, Tennis Australia proposed taking over TSA’s national operations. The arrangement would have transferred much of the administration of senior competitive tennis to Tennis Australia. To maintain focus on Senior Tennis, the organization pledged to add a dedicated staff position focused on senior tennis and to create an advisory group to represent senior players. Under this proposal, TSA would no longer operate as a separate national organization.
However, when this proposal went to TSA’s state and territory divisions for approval, it was rejected. In other words, Tennis Australia proposed moving toward something closer to the model implemented by the USTA, but the Senior Tennis organization said no.
Naturally, I am curious how that happened, especially because the proposal seemed to address some of the challenges that TSA’s own leadership had identified. After working through the documents, I came away thinking less about the vote’s outcome than about the competing considerations that led to it. Much of this applies to the organizations representing senior competitive players in the United States.
The story begins in 2018, when TSA president Peter Dighton discussed the organization’s future in his annual report. TSA was in reasonably good shape. Its finances were healthy, its tournament calendar was full, and Australian players were performing well in international Masters competition. Dighton specifically noted that the organization was not facing a crisis.
Nevertheless, he recognized some longer-term concerns. TSA relied heavily on volunteers, and its leadership had to consider succession planning, administrative efficiency, and whether the organization had sufficient resources to expand its activities. These were typical problems for an organization that had developed a successful program over many years but depended on a relatively small group of people to keep everything running.
Meanwhile, Tennis Australia was developing an Adult Participation Strategy intended to expand opportunities for adults to play tennis. The strategy included recreational and social tennis, along with competitive activities. TSA supported the broader effort, but its own resources were concentrated on the national championships, international representative teams, and other established senior competitions.
That created an interesting situation. TSA was successfully administering the activities it had been established to support, but taking on additional responsibilities would require more people, more money, or a different way of organizing the work.
Discussions between TSA and Tennis Australia obviously had already begun by 2018. The following year, those discussions produced a formal proposal that would have fundamentally changed the national organization.
Under the proposed arrangement, Tennis Australia would assume responsibility for the Australian representative teams, ITF tournament sanctioning, the seniors competition calendar, and the Hall of Fame. The planning documents also addressed the administration of major national championship activities. Tennis Australia would employ a Seniors Coordinator and establish a Seniors Advisory Group to provide input on the needs of older competitive players.
TSA’s national organization would be shuttered, with its remaining funds distributed to the state and territory divisions. Those divisions would continue to have a role in senior tennis, maintaining relationships with their corresponding Tennis Australia Member Associations.
There were some practical advantages to the proposal. Tennis Australia already employed people who handled the administrative work involved in running national programs, along with the systems and resources to support them. Bringing senior tennis into that operation would have taken some of the burden off TSA’s volunteers and reduced the need to find replacements for experienced administrators when they stepped away.
The proposed Seniors Coordinator position is particularly interesting to me. Rather than expecting volunteers to manage national programs while juggling their other commitments, Tennis Australia would have an employee whose responsibilities specifically included senior tennis. That person would have access to the organization’s internal resources and could work directly with the people responsible for national participation and competitive programs.
I particularly like the idea of having someone on staff whose job specifically includes senior tennis. It means there is someone responsible for keeping the programs running, following up on problems, and maintaining continuity as volunteers and organizational leadership change.
Of course, the proposal also fundamentally changed who would make the decisions.
TSA had its own national governance structure, with representatives accountable to the state and territory seniors divisions. Under the proposed arrangement, senior tennis would become part of Tennis Australia’s operations. The Seniors Advisory Group could provide expertise and recommendations, but ultimate authority would rest with Tennis Australia. The people responsible for advising an organization are not necessarily the people who decide how its money and staff will be allocated.
The decision came on August 22, 2019, when TSA’s state and territory divisions voted on the proposed dissolution of the national organization. It needed a 75% majority to pass, and fell short of that threshold. Interestingly, TSA’s national executive had no say in the vote. Only the divisions could decide whether to accept Tennis Australia’s offer.
I’d love to know more about the factors that ultimately drove that outcome. Unfortunately, I haven’t found much that sheds light on the results from the individual divisions. I can think of several reasons why each area might have supported or opposed the proposal, but that doesn’t tell me what actually happened with the vote.
I am not inclined to second-guess the decision. The divisions were being asked to make a fundamental change to an organization they had spent years supporting. They were in a much better position than I am to understand what they valued about the existing arrangement and what they were prepared to give up.
What is truly interesting is what the decision reveals about the tradeoffs involved in representing a specialized group of tennis players.
I am currently serving my second term on the board of the National Women’s Tennis Organization (NWTO). Our counterparts in the National Senior Men’s Tennis Association (NSMTA) face many of the same issues. Both organizations exist to advocate for senior competitive players, but neither controls the national tournament structure. That responsibility belongs to the USTA.
We can identify problems, develop recommendations, communicate with USTA leadership, and advocate for changes. We also have to persuade the people who actually control the programs and resources to act on those recommendations.
Recently, representatives of NWTO and NSMTA met with USTA Adult Tennis leadership. The organizations were assured that the USTA intends to market senior tennis more aggressively. I was pleased to hear that, and I hope the commitment produces results.
However, an important practical limitation remains. The USTA can make that commitment today and redirect its attention elsewhere tomorrow. NWTO and NSMTA have no authority to require continued investment in senior tennis, regardless of how strongly our members feel about its importance.
That isn’t necessarily a criticism of the people making those decisions. The USTA is responsible for a broad range of programs, and its leadership has to allocate resources according to the organization’s priorities. In my experience, senior competitive tennis has difficulty attracting substantial investment because it doesn’t contribute enough to the measures of success defined in the broader organizational goals.
That was one of the reasons Craig Tiley’s five objectives for American tennis concerned me in the first place. Growing participation, developing elite players, and expanding the number of events are all worthwhile ambitions. However, the benefits to established senior competitors depend on how those objectives are implemented and which activities receive attention.
An organization established specifically to serve senior competitive tennis approaches those decisions differently. TSA doesn’t have to decide whether junior development or professional tennis deserves more attention than age-group competition. Its purpose is to support senior tennis, and that remains the exclusive consideration in its decisions.
There is considerable value in that kind of organizational focus. It provides stability when the priorities of the larger governing body change. The people making decisions about senior competition are also directly accountable to the organizations representing those players.
The challenge is that independence doesn’t supply the resources needed to carry out those decisions. I have seen what committed volunteers can accomplish. A small group of people with the right combination of knowledge, experience, and determination can build and maintain programs that would otherwise require substantial paid staff. Some volunteers become so indispensable that it is difficult to imagine the organization functioning without them.
That becomes a problem when they eventually decide to step away.
Volunteer organizations need people willing to handle administrative work, manage finances, organize events, and assume leadership responsibilities. Recruiting those people can be difficult, particularly when the positions require specialized knowledge or a significant commitment of time. An organization may have ambitious plans but lack the capacity to pursue them without jeopardizing the programs it already operates.
Those were among the concerns TSA’s leadership was discussing in 2018. The organization was functioning well, but there were limits to what its existing structure could support. Tennis Australia’s proposal offered access to a larger administrative organization and dedicated professional staff. TSA’s existing arrangement preserved independent governance and direct responsibility for its competitive programs. The decision involved weighing what each structure could accomplish and what might be lost in making the change.
There is another complication that I think deserves attention. Moving a specialized program into a larger organization may improve its access to resources, but it also places that program in competition with everything else the organization wants to accomplish.
A dedicated Seniors Coordinator would be a meaningful commitment. However, that employee would still work within Tennis Australia’s priorities, budgets, and management structure. The position could make senior tennis more visible internally and provide someone responsible for carrying out approved initiatives. It would not necessarily guarantee that those initiatives would continue to receive the same support indefinitely.
On the other hand, TSA’s independence gave it control over its own priorities without guaranteeing that it could afford to pursue them.
I suspect most people who have served on nonprofit boards will recognize the dilemma. Having authority over a decision is useful only to the extent that the organization can act on it. Having access to substantial resources is similarly useful only when the people controlling those resources consider your objectives worth supporting.
The 2019 vote resolved the immediate question of whether TSA would dissolve under the proposed arrangement. It didn’t eliminate the practical considerations that had prompted the discussions.
In its subsequent annual reports, TSA continued to describe efforts to work with Tennis Australia and address its own administrative and financial challenges. The 2020 annual report also discussed an unsuccessful proposal to establish an annual levy based on the membership of TSA’s divisions. That would have provided another source of operating revenue for the national organization.
The same report distinguished between Tennis Australia’s support for Australian international representatives and direct operating funding for TSA. At that time, Tennis Australia was providing assistance to players representing Australia but was not providing an annual operating grant to the independent national organization.
That distinction is consistent with some of the financial questions I raised yesterday. Supporting a particular competition or group of players is different from funding the organization responsible for administering an entire program.
The report also described a difference in emphasis between the organizations. TSA’s traditional focus was competitive senior tennis, while Tennis Australia’s adult participation initiatives encompassed a much broader population, including recreational and social players. Both organizations were working to support adults playing tennis, but they weren’t necessarily trying to accomplish exactly the same things.
Interestingly, a related development occurred in Western Australia earlier this year. Last July, Tennis West announced that they had assumed operational responsibilities for senior tennis in Western Australia. The announcement also described plans to establish a Seniors Tennis Advisory Group in that region, providing specialized input on participation, competition, and engagement.
That bears obvious similarities to elements of the national arrangement proposed in 2019, although the circumstances and organizational responsibilities are different. I don’t have enough information to know all the considerations behind the Western Australian decision. I suspect there were practical administrative advantages, but that is pure speculation on my part.
What the development demonstrates is that the senior tennis community isn’t homogeneous. The state and territory divisions have their own histories, resources, leadership, and relationships with the larger tennis organizations. It would be surprising if they all approached decisions in exactly the same way.
The arrangement that makes sense in Western Australia may not be appropriate elsewhere. Likewise, the divisions that voted on the national proposal in 2019 were evaluating a particular arrangement at a particular point in time. Their decision doesn’t establish that the same approach would always be rejected or that independence must take the same form in every jurisdiction.
Looking back at this history, I find myself increasingly reassured about Craig Tiley’s record with senior tennis. Tennis Australia was sufficiently interested in the national seniors program to propose taking responsibility for its administration and providing dedicated staff. The proposal wasn’t adopted, but its existence adds useful context to the question that started this investigation.
I also find myself thinking about the relationship between organizational structure and what the people represented by those organizations actually experience. Senior players are primarily interested in having appropriate opportunities to compete. Most probably give relatively little thought to which organization employs the administrator, maintains the tournament calendar, or approves the budget.
This Australian saga illustrates several different ways to organize those responsibilities, along with the compromises involved in each. It also raises some interesting questions about the position of NWTO and NSMTA, which have an independent voice but comparatively little direct authority over the competitive programs they advocate for.
Tomorrow, I’ll bring the discussion back to the United States and consider what these arrangements might tell us about the future of senior competitive tennis under Craig Tiley’s leadership of the USTA.
I am painfully aware that I failed in my intent to be more succinct in today’s post. There is always tomorrow to redeem myself.
