USTA's CEO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. By Javier Palenque

If you want to listen to the article click here.

Subject: Urgent Call for Action: Addressing Cultural Issues and Ensuring Accountability at USTA

Dear USTA CEO,

The recent verdict in Orlando, where a sexual harassment victim was vindicated in just 150 minutes, should serve as a resounding alarm bell for the USTA's leadership under your purview. The rapid judgment by the jury shines a glaring spotlight on the deeply entrenched cultural issues within your organization. Your thinking is dated. It is imperative that you confront this stark reality with unwavering resolve and take immediate steps to address it. The cost of inaction is too great, and the repercussions of your decisions reverberate far beyond the courtroom (understand the future).

Allow me to be unequivocal: standing idly by is not an option. This is not merely a sales dilemma that you're probably accustomed to navigating; it's a fundamental crisis of leadership. The problem is serious. The prevalence of sexual harassment cases, including the thirty concealed incidents over the past five years, is nothing short of appalling, thirty cases in five years alone, that is one every six months. Under your leadership, such patterns of misconduct have been allowed to fester unchecked. I demand answers: why has this toxic culture persisted, and why have there been no tangible efforts to effect meaningful change? What accountability measures will be taken for the legal team's failures that have tarnished your organization's reputation and squandered valuable resources? Why are they still employed another day? It is the culture you protect and live Mr. CEO.

For six years, I've endeavored to engage the USTA board in dialogue to address these pressing concerns and propose viable solutions, particularly regarding participation in the sport. Yet, my appeals have fallen on deaf ears, emblematic of a systemic aversion to change and a dogged commitment to maintaining the status quo at any cost. Mr. CEO, the root of your current challenges lies in cultural failures stemming from your lack of decisive leadership and guidance. The Ol'd boys are the failed past, not the future that the sport needs, understanding this is key for the future.

The leadership's refusal to entertain dissenting voices, epitomized by the Chairperson's censorship of my board application, and your blocking my emails is deeply troubling. Deploying legal tactics to silence legitimate concerns is not only a waste of resources but a flagrant disregard for accountability and transparency. Your failure to effect change, even when warranted, only underscores your profound disconnect from the issues plaguing tennis under the USTA's auspices. To put it in simple words, you have no idea what to do and you won't listen to critics. That is like hiring a driver who has no idea where to go and won't listen to those who do.

Furthermore, the handling of the recent sexual harassment case, spearheaded by the head of the legal team, raises serious ethical questions. How can someone entrusted with upholding integrity and ethics endorse legal actions that result in egregious harm and financial ruin for a family and a teenager, without facing any repercussions? The absence of accountability for such lapses in judgment perpetuates a culture of impunity within the USTA, for which you must assume responsibility. You cannot look the other way any longer. Thirty other families could not fight the USTA, and one other settled with you without the noise, all under your time.

In any other business context, such failures would precipitate swift dismissal. Yet, it appears that within the USTA, accountability is a luxury afforded only to those outside the inner circle of power. This double standard erodes the organization's integrity and undermines public trust in your leadership. You realize you are self-deprecating your leadership. This makes little sense to anyone with a minute modicum of intelligence. It does not help you never played the sport and your decisions don't have stature.

As CEO, your foremost obligation is to the sport, its participants, and the wider community. Yet, your actions, or lack thereof, betray a prioritization of self-preservation over the greater good. Your focus is the US Open which is not tennis, it's entertainment using tennis. This means you sell: box seats, billboards, food, pop-up venues, tickets, drinks, and clean bathrooms so people can watch foreigners play a sport the audience won't. Do you see the difference? Do you comprehend the problem? This is why whatever your revenue is, it is meaningless if it does not help the sport and if you fail to create new fans.

Such behavior may be acceptable in salespeople, but it falls far short of the ethical standards expected of a CEO. How can you foster growth and inclusivity within tennis when your ranks are rife with systemic injustices and moral failings? It's time to demonstrate the gravitas needed to effect real change, rather than resorting to cowardly silence and complacency as you have been doing for the past few years.

The time for a reckoning has come. We cannot continue to ignore the pervasive issues plaguing the USTA. Tennis is languishing under your leadership; the insular culture perpetuated by your administration only serves to exacerbate the problem. I implore you to demonstrate true leadership by embracing accountability, fostering transparency, and committing to substantive change. The people from the legal team must be let go.

If you find these tasks beyond your capabilities or will, then I urge you to step aside and make way for someone who can lead us to a brighter future.

Your promotion of false participation numbers is emblematic of your inability to address the root causes of our problems with tennis participation. The sport doesn't need salesmanship; it needs genuine leadership focused on nurturing its growth and fostering a lifelong love of tennis in future generations.

I stand ready to work collaboratively towards a brighter future for the USTA and the sport of tennis. However, if you persist in perpetuating the status quo, by the way, we are then on opposite points of view, we would have a problem as I want to solve the issues and you want to perpetuate them. We cannot be pulling in a different direction. You want to keep employed those who should not be, I want change as the sport needs it. The time for action is now. The future of tennis depends on it and the status quo that you are part of is a proven failure. Know that I have no desire to have yes people in any team, the best thinking shall always prevail and the status quo has vast experience in not knowing what to do. This is how the game has been aged and why you target it to institutions that add no value to the tennis economy, though they do bring revenue.

It is important that you understand the message the jurors gave you, ( a group of everyday Floridians), in a short 150 minutes they concluded that all of your thinking, the boards, the executives, and especially yours as a CEO is flawed ( this means mistaken). They said, being in court is a mistake, doing what you did is a mistake, attacking the victim is also an error, and when given the choice they decided to punish you so you do not do it again. Learn the lesson, the culture you head is on the wrong side of the law.

You will not appeal the decision from the jury, the legal heads will be let go, and you will grant me the meeting in which I will hold you and every board member accountable for the failure of vision, leadership, and action that the sport so desperately needs. This is what serious people do! Can you deal with accountability and responsibility? or will you continue to censor me in fear of the truth and hope that the false data you give out will save your errors in judgment and limited know-how? They won't, intelligence will, but only if it is at the right time. The sport needs to be saved from the USTA, which you lead. Maybe now you understand where you stand.

Respectfully,

Javier Palenque