Yesterday’s post (The Price of Success In Senior Women’s Tennis) described how the USTA National financial incentive structure makes it hard for many Sections to support players and teams at elite levels of adult competition. Today’s post describes how that same factor also actively incentivizes them to allocate most of their resources to the largest population of tennis players. Each Section receives a bulk grant each year based on the number of USTA members it serves. The only way to increase the allocation is by attracting and retaining more players.
The tennis playing population can be visualized as a bell curve, with beginners on the left side, elite performers on the right, and the vast majority of players occupying the middle. Smart people at the Section offices are quick to realize that they have to cater to the middle, which is where the majority of the players live. The tail ends of the bell curve don’t have enough people to move the funding needle much, if at all.
Fortunately, the USTA at all levels seems to recognize that building participation for the beginners at the left-hand side of the bell curve is essential. The sport must continuously attract newcomers who form the foundation for future growth of the sport. Very few people stay on the left-hand side of the bell curve for long. Though some will drop out, many more will (hopefully) develop a higher mastery level and move toward the middle. Consequently, it makes financial sense for Sections and USTA National to throw resources at beginning players. They fill the development pipeline essential to build and maintain the playing population in the middle.
Unfortunately, the elite tail end of the bell curve creates no compelling financial incentive for support at the Sectional level based on the current funding structure. While these players represent the pinnacle of tennis performance, there isn’t an easy or fast way to build that population. It may be an unconscious bias, but there is a widespread attitude that investing resources in adult elite-level tennis doesn’t make sense because it is a dead end for building participation.
Money shouldn’t be the only consideration.
A fully realized competitive pathway is vital for maintaining a healthy tennis ecosystem. The premature dead-end at elite tennis performance hurts everybody. Juniors who are aging out of high school and college find there is no place to continue to compete in high-performance tennis. The same absence of an opportunity to compete also hurts the older adults who significantly outperform the center of the bell curve. These players simply don’t have an appropriate place to play, and the Section offices aren’t incentivized in any way to change that.
Tomorrow’s post outlines how failing to serve the elite players in the adult competitive ecosystem has a depressive effect on tennis participation. Neglecting and marginalizing the elite player population risks losing some of the sport’s most talented players while moving the competitive desert toward the middle. Left unchecked, this will have a depressive effect on participation at the center of the bell curve. I think we are already seeing exactly that in my local area.
To truly serve the future of tennis, we must stop thinking of elite adult players as a dead end and instead as a vital part of a healthy competitive tennis ecosystem. USTA National has to recognize that the Sections aren’t incentivized to support the elite tail of the adult player population. In fact, I am galvanizing toward the position that the care and feeding of the tennis ecosystem can only be effectively done at the National level.
