You don’t have to take my word for it. In his memoir “Cattle to Courts,” Ken McAllister, the former Executive Director of USTA Texas, outlined exactly how and why the rise of USTA League Play is directly responsible for the decline in Adult tournament participation. Decisions made at the USTA National level had a profound impact on the direction of tournament tennis in the Section and by logical extension, also nationally.
The USTA League Program was created in 1980. However, growth was initially slow primarily due to player skepticism over the validity of the NTRP ratings. According to McAllister, leadership in Texas initially remained focused on tournaments as the primary delivery mechanism for Adult tennis.
Despite the implicit apathy from the Texas Section office, League Tennis generated steady growth for the next 30 years. McAllister chalks up the success of League play to the convenience factor. Players were no longer required to travel to play competitive matches. Additionally, the incentives of Sectional and National Championships was attractive to new players.
However, there is a little bit of a mystery (at least to me) about what came next. In his book, McAllister claims that by 2010, Adult tournament participation had declined to the point that USTA Texas started experimenting with “innovative formats.” However, he did not provide any additional details about what that entailed.
In 2010, I was still in the midst of my short 28 year hiatus from tennis, though one of my kids was just starting to engage as a Junior. I have absolutely no idea what changed that year. Perhaps this was the creation of the Adult Masters? Was this when the “point per round ranking system” was first implemented for Adults in Texas?
I looked through the USTA Texas and the USTA National Yearbooks from that year. Whatever innovations were put into place didn’t warrant any mentions in those publications. Of course, the obvious next step is to ask Ken McAllister about it directly. The next time I see him, I will do exactly that.
- Cattle to Courts: A History of Tennis in Texas, Ken McAllister, 2019, pages 17-18.
- 2010 Year In Review, USTA Texas.
In my opinion, one of the things that is key to remember when talking about shifts in tennis participation is demographic changes. Each generation decides how they want to spend their time and money based on their preferences. To paint with a broad brush, the boomers are joiners, buyers & had no problem dropping the kids off while they did their own thing. The millennials are dabblers, renters and prefer to do things together with their families. If certain tennis offerings don’t tick the preference boxes for the different generations, then those offerings tend to decline. The trend of blaming something for certain outcomes without taking into consideration the demographic shift and broader trends is rampant in tennis and obfuscates the real problems that need to be addressed in order to keep tennis thriving. My two cents…
Thanks for the comment, and I agree to a certain extent with your perspective. I personally believe that tournaments are a critical part of the tennis competitive ecosystem. My concern is that Leagues are crowding tournaments out of existence. If that happens, it will ultimately weaken tennis. I do no think that League culture should equate to tennis culture, but we appear to be headed in that direction.