When the Trophy Husband and I bought our house, we planted a variety of herbs in and around the flower beds—including mint, which thrived. At first, we were delighted. Eventually, we realized that mint is, in fact, a bad weed. There are only so many mint juleps a person can reasonably drink. It took years to eradicate the volunteer mint plants that spread through every corner of the yard and to finally corral the herb back into a container where it should have been planted in the first place. It was a valuable learning experience.
Adult tennis participation reminds me a lot of that mint. At first glance, the abundance of play opportunities created by USTA League Tennis seems like a good thing. It’s structured, social, and accessible. However, the sheer volume of league play has taken on the characteristics of an invasive species. It has spread so thoroughly that it’s choking out other vital forms of adult engagement, including tournaments, social play, drills, and informal match opportunities. Adult beginners trying to engage with the sport often struggle to find the court time to fuel their burgeoning interest.
Yesterday’s post centered around Junior Tennis Retention, one of the three focus areas in the USTA’s 2026 Sport Science Research Grant Program, which was recently announced. Today’s topic, Adult Participation, is also directly linked. The pipeline between junior and adult tennis is broken, and the two problems are inextricably connected. The decline in adult participation is the predictable result of failing to retain juniors, while the culture of adult tennis does little to welcome or accommodate junior players making that transition or returning to the sport later in life.
The fundamental problem is structural. USTA League has grown into a self-contained massive silo within the larger tennis ecosystem. The committees that oversee leagues are incentivized to “grow” their own participation numbers, which has led to an endless cycle of new formats, overlapping seasons, and year-round competition. Those internal success metrics have come at the expense of the sport’s broader health. When every weeknight and weekend is booked with league matches, there is no oxygen left for other forms of tennis engagement.
The consequences extend far beyond scheduling conflicts. League tennis monopolizes both player attention and court space at facilities. Lessons, drop-in drills, and other forms of informal structured play, which are the entry points for most adult beginners, are steadily disappearing. That means the very programs designed to introduce and retain new players are being displaced by the same system that measures its own success by participation growth.
As I wrote yesterday, the culture clash between junior and adult tennis is real and corrosive. Juniors grow up in a results-driven environment that rewards development and mastery. In contrast, adult league culture often rewards strategic self-limitation and rule-based gamesmanship. If the adult tournament side of the ecosystem were healthy and thriving, juniors might have a natural landing place as they age up. Instead, many encounter an adult landscape dominated by a format that feels foreign, constraining, unwelcoming, and unappealing.
In the context of this new USTA Sport Science Research initiative, the Adult Participation focus area offers an opportunity for organizational introspection. This is not simply a behavioral study but rather a systems engineering problem. The real question is this: What happens when the dominant form of competition begins to suffocate the ecosystem it was meant to support?
To restore balance, the USTA will eventually need to make hard choices. More diverse forms of adult engagement, including tournaments, flexible match play, community drills, and volunteer-led social programs, must reclaim space on the tennis calendar. To make that possible, someone will need to muster the courage to scale back league offerings to free up the courts and calendar.
I’m encouraged that the USTA is finally taking steps to study this issue seriously. It’s long overdue. My hope is that a qualified researcher steps forward to tackle this essential topic within the 2026 grant program. The health of adult tennis, and by extension, the entire tennis ecosystem, depends on it.
For those interested in applying, the USTA Sport Science Research 2026 program requires that projects be completed within a year of award. Each proposal must include a plan for measurable deliverables, clear alignment with the USTA’s Adult Participation priority, and a roadmap for dissemination. Full details and submission instructions are available through the USTA Research Grant Guidelines. The deadline is January 9, 2026, with awards announced between February 1 and December 1, 2026.
Here are some of my previous key posts on this topic.
