I CAN’T BREATHE PAT, STOP! SAYS THE SPORT TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE FALSE NON-PROFIT, THE USTA. by Javier Palenque

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Any responsible board member, tennis lover, or USTA executive should see this picture and immediately feel shame, and responsibility and look back at the decisions made as a board member for the past 15 years and keep reading to be enlightened. A little bit of self-reflection should take place and honesty would not hurt. That would be a good thing, it would mean that there is a conscience of responsibility and a desire to honor the fiduciary responsibilities to the sport. However, most of the board members, executives, and the chairman will take the opposite position (the one that requires no thought and closing of the mind and of course no reflection, in other words, no intellect) and ignore the image and rationalize that “All is good, and tennis is growing based on the lies they are told”, the falsehoods and deception to the American public and sponsors will go on, the use of the nonprofit designation to benefit a few are working, and to continue to use the under-served kids to portray the image of a caring and socially conscious not for profit will continue. It is remarkably disgusting and unethical and yet no board member wants to accept this reality and is complicit in the failure of tennis overall. Nothing can be further from the truth. Let me list the five grotesque errors of the board to the sport and the country that are asphyxiating the sport and its economy with the consent of the incapable board of directors.

FAILURE NUMBER ONE: “Failing to hold the executives of the USTA to deliver value to the sport’s constituents,” the sport is not the US OPEN, that is simply a 14-day show that brings resources in, most people attending the US Open do not even play tennis. Failing to understand this and funding incorrectly the limited resources the sports brings is a grotesque mistake that all it does is take the oxygen away from the sport.

Why do you continue this practice that proves useless when your primary responsibility is to grow the sport and the data tells you it is not growing? In case some of you can’t figure this out, the US Open is maxed out, so continuing to invest in it is senseless, getting into debt is simply stupid. The proof is the declining attendance during the past 10 years, ESPN’s low ratings, the average age of fans, and the failure to understand the demographic shifts in the country, even though I have been highlighting this for five years now.

FAILURE NUMBER TWO: Continue the tradition of being a false not-for-profit and rather than question the executives who accept this as a norm, the board goes along with no one questioning if this is even legal? It is not. Below is the table that you should all study, please note that in the last seven years about half of the money for the foundation comes from outside sources. The point is that the actual amount given to the foundation by the USTA is on average half of one percent. In English that means nothing! and yet the board seems proud of giving away less than a penny, how is this accepted by so many of you?

Now compare that amount handed out with the size of the country (330M), and the number of kids in the nation (62M), anyone with a modicum of intelligence level will tell you that you cannot fund so little and benefit from the status of a not for profit so much. Imagine if the USTA was a not-for-profit that helps kids with cancer ( the measure of success would be how many kids we help), collects half a billion a year, and helps with one-half of a percent of that amount of money? Anyone would conclude that it is a fraud. Yet, no one from the board says anything, and the swindle continues with the express approval of the board. Using for itself 99.95% of the revenues and not the sport is called a SCAM. This is not right! Why would you accept to be part of that fraud? You realize that the younger generations (our future) are being defrauded and no one from the board has the valor to stand up! to defend and protect the sport. What the sport needs is the opposite of what you are all doing, why is this so complicated to understand? and you want to know what is worse? you even get paid to do nothing!

FAILURE NUMBER THREE: The US Open’s average customer is 62 years of age, the cash-cow show has a limited time before those people start looking for a retirement home, the average customer age must drop by 25 years if you want a future for the sport. and fans for the once cash cow. Nothing from the executives’ plans or the CEO’s business plan addresses the main problem. Why do you pay them then? To keep what does not work from working? Don’t you see you are focusing on a dying and aging product for old people? How hard is it to comprehend this? Look at your average ages, yes, your own, they are also too high, look at your kids and families who play tennis, generations are skipping tennis in your own households. Why is that? and you can’t figure this out!

The point is this executive team that you have been supporting, has failed to address any of the problems the sport faces for years, it is so clear to everyone except you and yet the status quo still reigns the failure that tennis is today. Why do you allow this? If it is clear that it does not work, has not worked, and obviously will not work!

FAILURE NUMBER FOUR: The market has shifted completely, no one watches TV anymore, much less a 3–5-hour match between foreigners. Fans must be made and nurtured, and yet the best-funded not-for-profit invests in fan acquisition: nothing. In any business, there is a cost to acquiring customers, and the USTA executives fail to understand the basics of supply, demand, costs, and utility. Yet, the board keeps the same executive team that delivered the problems and failed to see the marketplace move away from the sport, much less solve the problems that they do not see. Dear board members, the only driving force must be “growing the game”, yet your executives only act as if the only thing that mattered was the US Open. Where is the responsible attitude toward the game and holding every single executive accountable for this mess? If the board does not do it, who will? They need to be let go or fired if it is not clear still.

In case you have not figured it out, all you are doing is aging the sport and making it prohibitively expensive for it to ever grow again and only for a smaller number of people! It all means fewer fans, do you not understand this simple reasoning?

FAILURE NUMBER FIVE: None of the big problems are being addressed, the governance is poor, the selection process is always behind closed doors and secret, the pay of the executives is way beyond their abilities, and the fact is that the USTA is run like a Klan of Ol’ men who are out of touch with the mood of the country and its changes. Have you tried snap-chatting with grandpa?

Here are some of the failures for generations that you approve of: In the internet era, no technology for the kids in 20 years, in the me-too era, nothing for women. The culture of racism that you support by settling yearly lawsuits only proves you support the poor system that is indefensible and disgusting, ask Taylor Townsend, the culprit; Pat’s friend who had everything to do with it and got paid one million dollars per year for doing nothing for the sport and working part-time ( now Blackman does the same work for half the pay). None of you understand the mission, fight for it, or welcome discerning ideas to challenge your old views. You can sing kumbaya all day amongst yourselves, all you will have achieved are $181M in losses, the continuation of a pathetic executive team, $726M in debt, and the further allowance of giving real estate away to grassroots-led pickleball. Horrific!

CONCLUSIONS: I would like anyone of you to challenge me with facts not emotions. The truth is that in the last 15 years under Pat Galbraith, over $5B of revenues were handled by the USTA, the problem is that there is nothing to show for it. No young fans, no thousands of kids, no young adults, no future for the young coaches, giving away real estate and making the game so expensive that fewer and fewer people can play. No value was created for the sport with $5B dollars, and you are/were his board, where is your mea-culpa? How does any one of you defend the disaster and incompetence that represents? Yet Pat is still there, how is this possible? if what he did is a crime to the sport, and your looking the other way is also against your fiduciary duties.

Please in the name of decency, honor, and the country, RESIGN, and take Pat and his Klan as far away from the game as possible. All he has done is misled the sport when all he needed to do is care for the sport. With that limited and dumb mindset for 14 years, of course, the sport has no future, the sport was never invested in even with $5B to play with.

Many of you when you read this think, this is nonsense, until you look at the data. The appointment of the status quo salesperson was also a mistake, he is working on the US Open, when what needs work is the sport. You are once again repeating the failure of Pat. The game cannot possibly grow if over 90% of young adults do not even know what tennis is. How on earth will they like something they do not know or are exposed to. What about their kids, much less? In the 14 years of Pat’s leadership that is exactly 4 tennis generations down the drain. FYI each generation of kids is from ages 8–12, so in 14 years you have 4 generations lost. Has any one of you bothered to calculate the cost of the incompetence of Pat and his team? in dollars real terms over $1B, in retail space? (go to your local Dicks sporting goods store and see for yourself), in jobs for young coaches? (why do you think there is a shortage after covid?) in the number of kids playing? Pat hides the numbers, all he has to do is put them in an excel spreadsheet, when he started to be a director how many kids played by age, gender, and zip code and compare to today by the same metrics. The result is an absolute failure and yet he still is there, because you allow it.

Please all of you RESIGN, all you have done to the sport is accelerate its demise, in-debt it, and make it unaffordable, exclusive, irrelevant to young people, and only relevant for grandpas. You do not have to believe me, all you must do is look at the data that the USTA hides from us.

Once again, as usual, I am unequivocally correct. What are you going to do next, hide like the courageous Pat and hope the accountability goes away, like a Pepto Bismol commercial, or censor me like the democratic poor man from the poorest parish in Louisiana? or the right thing, and that is to submit your resignation to the chairman today. If it will cost you your US Open free tickets, do not worry I will pay for them if you do the right thing.

I say NO to INEPTITUDE and YES to growing the game.

I can be reached at [email protected]