My inbox recently lit up like a Christmas tree when USTA Texas announced the winners of its 2026 Best of Texas Tennis People’s Choice Awards. Apparently, a lot of people had opinions and knew I would have a hot take or two, as well.
Some of the results were surprising enough that the messages were like a national restaurant chain without an on-site smoker somehow winning a Best BBQ in Texas competition over a local joint where people routinely stand in line for hours. People would probably ask exactly how the winner was selected.
Before going any farther, I want to make one thing clear. I am not suggesting that any of this year’s winners are undeserving of some form of recognition. I know enough about some of the organizations and programs to believe they are doing terrific work. My concern is with what the People’s Choice process actually measures and whether that aligns with what people reasonably assume an award called “Best of Texas Tennis” represents.
I have voted for these awards in the past, including this year. Most of the time, I participate in the balloting because somebody asked for my vote. If I know enough about the nominee to agree that it is worthy of recognition, I generally click the link and cast a ballot. If I don’t, I usually don’t vote. I suspect I am not particularly unusual in that regard.
That makes the People’s Choice Awards interesting from a measurement perspective. USTA Texas describes the program as an opportunity for the tennis community to nominate candidates and vote for their favorites. The individual awards are, in fact, identified as “Favorite Tennis Facility,” “Favorite Tennis Tournament,” and so forth. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.
The larger program, however, is called Best of Texas Tennis. “Favorite” and “best” are entirely different things. The distinction became particularly visible in this year’s results because several awards appear to have benefited from exceptionally enthusiastic communities capable of mobilizing people to vote.
Kiest Tennis Center is a good example. Last summer, Kiest faced the possibility of a significant change in how the Dallas facility would be operated. The community responded with considerable passion. Players organized, spoke before the Dallas City Council, gathered petition signatures, and generally demonstrated how much the facility means to the people who use it. Ultimately, the threat to the non-profit that operates the facility was successfully fended off.
It was a heartwarming example of a tennis community coming together to protect something important to them. A short time later, USTA Texas conducted a People’s Choice contest asking tennis communities to mobilize support for their favorite programs and facilities. Kiest won.
When viewed through the lens of community engagement, Kiest may have been uniquely prepared for the contest. Its supporters had just spent months organizing around the facility, communicating with one another, asking people to take action, and demonstrating that they could mobilize when something they cared about was at stake. Then somebody handed that highly energized community a ballot.
I don’t think Kiest winning means the voting process failed. In one respect, the voting process worked spectacularly well. Kiest demonstrated that it has a passionate community capable of rallying behind the facility. That is meaningful. However, it just isn’t the same thing as establishing that Kiest is objectively the best tennis facility in Texas.
I have played at Kiest many times. Given some of the structural inequities and challenges facing the facility, I think the people running it have done a great job. However, if someone asked me to identify the best tennis facility in Texas based on the physical facility, amenities, court quality, programming, player experience, and whatever other criteria we collectively decided should define “best,” Kiest would face some formidable competition. To put a finer point on it, I don’t think it is even the best facility in Dallas.
That isn’t an insult to Kiest. It illustrates that the award is measuring something other than what the title suggests.
Another result makes the measurement problem even easier to see. This year’s Favorite Tennis Tournament was a Level 7 adult tournament that attracted 32 players. I am sure it probably was a terrific event. I didn’t play it, so I have no basis for saying otherwise. For that matter, I couldn’t have played it if I tried because the tournament didn’t conduct any divisions for which I was eligible. Yet I was apparently just as qualified to vote for it as any of the 32 people who actually experienced the tournament. (I did not vote in that category.)
I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the winning tournament received considerably more than 32 votes. It may have received an order of magnitude or two more votes than people who actually played in it. If that is true, most of the people responsible for selecting it as their favorite tournament could not possibly have been evaluating their own experience as participants. They were supporting a person, organization, or community associated with the tournament.
Again, that is not necessarily bad. It simply tells us what the ballot measures. People’s Choice awards measure votes.
More specifically, they measure some combination of awareness, enthusiasm, network size, organizational influence, and the willingness and ability to ask other people to vote. In previous years, supporters could repeatedly return to the ballot, and I routinely saw exhortations to vote every day. This year’s ballot included an honor-code statement indicating that each person should vote only once and tied the ballot to an email address. That is an improvement if the objective is one person, one vote. It is not clear how that measure was actually enforced, however.
There was another interesting omission from this year’s ballot. The nominees were listed, but voters were not given meaningful descriptions explaining what the nominated program, event, or organization actually did. That means someone encountering an unfamiliar nominee had three options. Conduct their own research, vote based largely on the name, or not vote in that category.
Meanwhile, someone receiving a direct message from the organization saying, “Please vote for us,” knew exactly which button to click. Under those conditions, I am reluctant even to call the result a popularity contest. Popularity implies that voters know enough about the alternatives to prefer one over the others. This is actually a mobilization contest to see who can marshal the most votes.
That does not make the results meaningless. Community support is valuable. An organization capable of motivating hundreds of people to take action on its behalf has demonstrated something worth recognizing. Kiest’s experience last summer is a particularly powerful example of why that kind of community engagement matters.
The question is whether that is what the award is intended to recognize.
This brings me back to the theme I have been exploring all weekend. Rules and processes are mechanisms designed to produce outcomes. We should occasionally stop looking at what the mechanism is called and examine what it actually does.
If USTA Texas wants an award recognizing the tennis organization with the most energized community, People’s Choice voting is a perfectly reasonable way to select it. Put the nominees on a ballot and see who can rally the most support.
If we want to identify the best tournament in Texas, we have much better data available. Start with the people who actually played the tournaments. USTA already surveys tournament participants. That process could be expanded or modified to ask questions specifically designed to evaluate tournament quality. How well did the tournament communicate? Were schedules reasonable? Were matches efficiently administered? What was the quality of the facility? How was the overall player experience? Would the player enter the event again?
The resulting participant data should become the most heavily weighted component in selecting an outstanding tournament. Other objective factors could supplement it. The result would not be perfect. No award process is. However, at least the underlying data would be generated primarily by people who actually experienced the thing being evaluated.
The same idea could apply to USTA League. If USTA Texas wants to recognize an outstanding local League program, ask the players who participate in those leagues about their experience. Importantly, survey everyone rather than allowing local organizations to curate a list of players expected to provide favorable feedback. Ask consistent questions across areas and compare the results.
That would do more than produce a more meaningful award. It would generate useful data about the health of USTA League throughout Texas.
After spending the past two days writing about rules whose effects should probably be studied more closely, I find that possibility considerably more interesting than the banner.
Some People’s Choice categories present a different problem because there may not be a meaningful way to rank them at all. Adaptive tennis is a good example. Different programs serve different populations with different needs using different resources. I am not convinced there is much value in asking the general tennis population to determine which one is “best.”
Perhaps those programs should not be competing against one another for a People’s Choice award in the first place. As an alternative, USTA Texas could establish objective criteria for a Program of Excellence designation. Programs meeting those standards could receive recognition. Better yet, attach a grant to the designation that allows successful programs to expand what they are doing and to serve more players.
The same philosophy could improve the tournament awards. Give the winning tournament a banner and bragging rights if we want, but also provide USTA-sponsored merchandise or some other tangible benefit that can be passed along to players at the following year’s event. Perhaps make winners ineligible the next year so recognition has an opportunity to move around the Section.
Awards could become small investments in the things USTA Texas wants to encourage. Admittedly, all of that is more work.
People’s Choice awards are extraordinarily easy to administer. Solicit nominations, create a ballot, collect votes, and identify whoever received the most. There is no need to establish complicated criteria. Nobody has to determine how different factors should be weighted. A committee does not have to debate whether one excellent program is somehow more excellent than another excellent program serving a completely different population.
There is considerable administrative appeal in that simplicity. USTA Texas has a standing committee charged with awards and recognition. Creating new awards and handing out banners provides visible evidence that recognition is happening. I am all for doing that for people and organizations doing good things for tennis. There are never going to be too many opportunities to say thank you to people doing difficult work, often with limited resources.
However, recognition means more when people understand what the recognition represents. That is where this year’s results concern me. My inbox didn’t fill up because people were angry that someone else received a banner. The messages were mostly some variation of disbelief about particular outcomes. People familiar with the nominees looked at the results and couldn’t reconcile what they knew with what an award called Best of Texas Tennis appeared to be telling them.
Once an award routinely produces that reaction, it risks diminishing the very recognition it was intended to provide. None of that takes anything away from this year’s winners. They entered a People’s Choice process, their supporters voted, and they received the most votes. Some of them also appear to have demonstrated something genuinely impressive about the communities surrounding their programs. At the same time, we should recognize the award for what it is.
If the objective is to celebrate community enthusiasm and organizational engagement, People’s Choice voting measures something useful. Call it People’s Choice, hand out the banners, and congratulate the organizations capable of inspiring their communities to show up for them.
If the objective is to identify the best tournament, facility, league, or program in Texas, we should probably start by deciding what “best” means and collecting information from the people actually in a position to evaluate it. For many of these categories, that data either already exists or could be collected without much difficulty.
This entire weekend has been about rules and processes that don’t necessarily work the way they were intended. Friday’s Sectional commitment rule may have contributed to consequences that took years to become visible. Yesterday’s 60 percent rule produces mathematical compliance while captains work around it to create viable teams.
Today’s People’s Choice process may actually be the simplest example of all. If you ask people to generate votes, they will generate votes. Just don’t confuse the resulting number with an achievement that is something other than that.
