Last weekend I watched Craig Tiley: Tennis Innovator, a short “documentary” produced by Tennis Channel in conjunction with the USTA. The 24-minute film profiles the former Tennis Australia CEO as he transitioned into his new role leading American tennis.
Calling this a documentary is a bit of a stretch. It is arguably better characterized as a promotional feature. It recounts Tiley’s successes to present him as exactly the kind of leader the USTA needs.
In fact, I came away wondering whether the project had originally been conceived as promotional material for the Australian Open. Much of the footage and storytelling would have been perfectly suited to building excitement around the tournament next January. Tiley’s departure for the USTA may have presented an opportunity to repurpose that material into a profile of the incoming CEO. That is entirely speculation on my part, but the finished product has that feel.
Whatever its origins, the film provides a useful introduction to a man whose influence on professional tennis has been substantial. Tiley spent more than two decades at Tennis Australia, where he helped transform the Australian Open into one of the sport’s most innovative and commercially successful events. The tournament has developed a reputation for embracing technology, improving the player and spectator experience, and experimenting with ideas that more traditional tennis tournaments have sometimes been reluctant to pursue.
Tiley deserves considerable credit for what he accomplished in Australia. However, many of the innovations associated with his tenure at the Australian Open are already in place at the US Open. He recognized opportunities to borrow successful ideas and implement them in Melbourne, often to great effect. Doing that well takes considerable skill, even if the ideas themselves aren’t particularly original.
It does, however, raise an interesting question about Tiley’s next assignment. When he took over the Australian Open, it had considerable room to grow. The US Open is already an enormous commercial enterprise with a sophisticated operation, established infrastructure, and a long history of its own innovation. Tiley is moving from an environment that had substantial opportunities to grow to one where many of those improvements have already been made.
There will undoubtedly be opportunities to make the US Open better. I am less convinced there is comparable headroom for the kind of transformation that characterized his tenure in Australia.
Before joining Tennis Australia, Tiley coached the men’s tennis program at the University of Illinois, culminating in an undefeated season and the NCAA team championship in 2003. That is an extraordinary achievement, especially for a program that was considered weak when he took over.
The Illinois story offers a glimpse into the leadership approach that would later characterize his work in Australia. Tiley sets ambitious objectives, develops a plan to achieve them, and relentlessly pursues the desired outcome. There is an obvious emphasis on building an environment where success becomes an organizational expectation rather than an occasional accomplishment.
I found that aspect of his career more encouraging than the familiar account of the Australian Open’s commercial growth. It suggests that his success is not simply a product of having the right resources or inheriting a favorable situation. He has shown he can build successful programs in very difficult environments.
That is an encouraging quality in someone assuming responsibility for an organization as large and complicated as the USTA. It also makes his initial choice of objectives particularly interesting. Toward the end of the film, an animated sequence presents five goals for American tennis under Tiley’s leadership:
- Making tennis the most-participated sport in America,
- Producing the most Grand Slam champions,
- Having the most players ranked in the world’s top 100,
- Making the US Open the world’s must-see tennis event, and
- Offering the most events per capita.
Those are certainly ambitious goals. They also align neatly with the portrait the film has constructed of a leader who sets audacious targets and then organizes his efforts around achieving them. As should be expected, I am particularly interested in what those objectives reveal about how Tiley envisions the future of American tennis.
There is a clear emphasis on growing participation at one end of the spectrum and developing elite professional players at the other. The US Open occupies its own prominent position, which is understandable given its importance to the USTA’s finances and international standing. Increasing the number of events provides another measurable objective, although the number of events alone tells us relatively little about the quality of the competitive opportunities they provide.
What I did not see was any explicit recognition of the competitive adult tennis ecosystem that exists between recreational participation and elite professional performance.
That includes USTA League players, adult tournament competitors, and the very important senior tennis community. These are people who are past the point of aspiring to professional competition, but nevertheless approach tennis as a serious competitive pursuit. Many have spent decades developing their games, competing for rankings and championships, and supporting the organizational infrastructure that makes those opportunities possible. There is a meaningful difference between encouraging more Americans to pick up a racquet and sustaining a competitive environment that keeps people engaged with the sport for a lifetime.
I recognize that five goals presented in a short animated segment cannot reasonably represent the USTA’s entire strategic agenda. The film is about Craig Tiley, not a comprehensive examination of what he ultimately plans to do. The absence of adult competitive tennis from this video does not establish that Tiley intends to neglect it.
Still, I think the omission is worth examining, particularly because the film places so much emphasis on his ability to pursue clearly defined objectives. Organizations tend to concentrate resources and attention on the outcomes their leaders choose to measure. If success is defined primarily by participation totals, professional rankings, Grand Slam champions, and event volume, there is a risk that other important dimensions of the tennis ecosystem will receive less attention.
That concern is particularly relevant to senior competitive tennis, where maintaining meaningful competition requires considerably more than simply attracting additional participants. I’ll have a lot more to say about that this weekend.
As a profile of Craig Tiley, Tennis Innovator is a reasonably engaging introduction to an accomplished tennis executive. Its strongest material comes from his coaching career and the insight that provides into his approach to leadership. The account of his tenure at Tennis Australia reinforces an impressive record, although the film is much more interested in celebrating that success than examining it.
I would have appreciated a more substantive documentary that explored the decisions, tradeoffs, and occasional failures behind Tiley’s prior accomplishments. The challenges awaiting him at the USTA would also have provided considerable material for a more probing examination. Instead, Tennis Channel has delivered a polished introduction to the organization’s new leader.
That has value, even if it falls short of what I generally expect from a documentary.
Tiley’s career suggests that he is exceptionally good at setting ambitious goals and pursuing them. His arrival at the USTA gives American tennis an opportunity to benefit from that experience, and I am interested to see what he accomplishes.
My lingering question is less about whether he can achieve the objectives he has articulated than whether those objectives adequately represent the full breadth of American tennis. The organization serves everyone from first-time recreational players to Grand Slam champions. I just hope the competitive adult ecosystem in the middle doesn’t get shortchanged in the process.
