WHAT STRAWBERRIES CAN TEACH THE INCAPABLE USTA By Javier Palenque

The USTA recently announced the departure of the head of Player Development—a $23 million annual arm of the organization that has been more about squandering resources than nurturing talent. In the last decade, they wasted a whooping $250M.

To the public, the USTA promotes this division as essential for growing tennis, but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. I attempted to share my concerns and solutions with this fellow years ago, but the problem wasn’t just his leadership, the real issue lies in the layers above him—the decision-makers devoid of vision, intelligence, purpose, or accountability. A culture that prioritizes self-preservation over real solutions has permeated the upper ranks. Look no further than their handling of sexual abuse cases, where the priority wasn’t protecting the vulnerable, but insulating the leadership. This means when the choice was protecting our youth or their jobs, they chose their jobs and were banking on using the missions' money to protect their lack of honor and integrity. In other words, we mess up, we cover ourselves and we use the mission's money to protect our bad decisions. The useless board rather than fire the wrong people, protects them and approves the CEO to pay the cost of incompetence with money that does not belong to them.

If you fail to remove rotten elements in any system, the decay spreads. This morning, as I reached into my refrigerator for strawberries, I noticed one had turned rotten. Instinctively, I discarded it, but not before realizing it had spoiled several others it touched. The lesson was simple: to preserve what is good, you must discard what is rotten. Yet, at the USTA, they operate in reverse—allowing the rot to persist (this is the culture). They’re far more concerned with how long they can maintain their positions than with the health of the sport they’re entrusted to protect. This is like the rotten strawberry in my fridge calculating how much longer it can stay in the fridge and caring nothing about who is eating the strawberry, me. These people are mindless.

The recent restructuring at the USTA, merging player development with other departments, is merely cosmetic—a reshuffling of the same ineffective pieces (the budget has to be cut and the waste stopped, changing heads is cosmetic, but the problem persists). What’s missing is the vision at the top. Without leadership capable of setting and executing a real strategy, this restructuring is doomed to fail as is every strategy that the USTA starts fails. The sport produces no money, only the pop-up show does, this is how they get their welfare paid for.

A visit to Lake Nona at 4:59 PM on any weekday is all the evidence you need—USTA staff are out the door as quickly as they can, led by the same executives who should be driving change and working overtime since they are overpaid. They are so simple-minded that they even say goodbye to each other at the parking lot while scamming the sport daily and on their way out. They can see the people arriving to play pickleball, this is astounding how limited they are.

The decision to remove the GM of PD is nothing but a token gesture meant to placate critics, but it fails to address the underlying decay. For years, this GM told us tennis was growing, citing fictitious participation numbers. In reality, tennis is dying. I told him so five years ago, but the leadership chose to ignore reality, much like the rotten strawberries I threw away. Now this individual is going to realize how his lies will come to haunt him, first tennis does not have 24M people to serve, second, what it has are old people who play a little bit, and in the 10 years he has led the department, no one worth mentioning came through PD, which means the system is wrong.

Any decent leader would understand the math of PD and shut it down years ago, last decade alone it wasted $250M, half of it in salaries of people who don't deserve it.

The truth is, that tennis requires leaders with vision, honor, and a genuine commitment to growth—not individuals clinging to their titles while presiding over the sport's decline and lying about its growth. The CEO, who has dabbled in promoting pickleball, and the truly incapable community tennis leadership, who have blatantly misrepresented participation numbers, must go. They have misled everyone, hiding behind the fa?ade of a nonprofit organization that in practice operates like a for-profit scam. They are the rotten strawberries in the fridge. My fridge, our sport.

In any rational system, leaders who preside over failure are removed quickly. Yet, the USTA persists in "kicking the can" down the road, ignoring the problems and postponing the inevitable. But each time they delay, they damage public parks, waste parents’ resources, squander kids' time, cede precious tennis real estate and retail space, and bleed the tennis economy dry. They’ve misled the government to maintain their nonprofit status while treating the US Open as a cash cow, using a bloated food and drink show to prop up their lies about the supposed growth of tennis. People, the US Open is only a pop-up show, that is all it is, so it should not be a nonprofit.

The only remedy is drastic: the attorney general of New York should revoke the USTA’s nonprofit status. These Ol' boys must be banned from running any nonprofit, and true leaders—ones with vision and integrity—must take their place immediately. Tennis needs individuals who:

1. Are dedicated to serving the game, not being served by it.
2. Understand the value of time and don’t squander it. This means respecting parents, kids, coaches, entrepreneurs, sponsors, etc.
3. Seek to share the joy and magic of tennis with as many people as possible. This would be part of the mission.

However, such leadership is too much to ask from the current failed regime. The result is clear: tennis will continue to shrink as pickleball and padel occupies the real estate and retail shelf space tennis once dominated. The young adults—those with purchasing power—will look elsewhere, and their children will never pick up a tennis racquet. Thank you, Mr. CEO, you have to explain to us why you are still employed.

I often wonder how the CEO of the USTA can be so blind and obtuse. If I were in charge, I’d surround myself with people far smarter than me, leveraging their intelligence to elevate the sport and the organization. But alas, I wear jeans, value a Timex over a Rolex, and believe that if you're running a nonprofit, the only thing that matters is impact. I’d measure that impact and serve the sport, shareholders, and country with honor, dignity, and above all, competence.

Instead, we see the opposite of the USTA: no value, wasted opportunities, and foolish decisions every day. The leadership is incapable of guiding this sport toward growth. The time has come to get rid of the problem and that is in addition to the GM of PD, the heads above him. Until this happens it is like the rotten strawberries choosing to stay in the fridge. WTF!

At the same time, the board says it's OK. I say, if you are rotten, or If I perceive you as rotten you are out, and strawberries don’t decide anything, but at the USTA, they do and what is worse is that the ones who are Klan members do, they are rotten, old, and expired. Since the board allows this, one thing is guaranteed: the sport's failure as you watch it unfold in any park, in any retailer, in any empty tennis event. However, the show in NY is for bankers, who do not play the sport or care for it. In other words, the leadership is mindless. So why do they control the sport?

Mr. CEO, you are an embarrassment to leadership, please leave the sport to those who know.

I say no to ineptitude and yes to growing the game.

You can reach me at [email protected]