EMPTY COURTS, FULL POCKETS: THE USTA’S BETRAYAL TO THE SPORT OF TENNIS. By Javier Palenque

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Socrates once warned that when a lie is repeated often enough, it ceases to be questioned. And what are lies but the rot that weakens the foundation of a once-mighty structure? The USTA stands as a monument to this decay—a once-decent institution now eroded by its own falsehoods, its purpose abandoned in favor of self-preservation.

Those at its helm no longer serve the sport; they serve only the illusion of their own competence. To confront the truth would mean reckoning with their own obsolescence, and their own failures. And so, the machine grinds on, spewing propaganda to obscure the desolate landscape they have created.

What should be a governing body fostering the expansion of tennis has instead metastasized into a bureaucratic tumor, feeding off the sport while slowly killing it.

This is no accident, no unfortunate byproduct of changing times. It is the result of deliberate choices made to sustain an institution that no longer has a reason to exist.

The USTA is a house of mirrors, where deception is not just common but necessary, where failure is hidden beneath layers of self-congratulatory reports and empty proclamations of growth. The organization is no longer merely ineffective; it is actively harmful.

Every morning, these so-called leaders go to work and pass by the empty courts of their parks, they see the repurposed high school facilities, the dwindling presence of tennis in retail stores. They know the truth. Heck, when they get to the parking lot at Lake Nona, they can see the empty tennis courts and the repurposing of the dead space for pickleball and padel. The small office now in NY after selling the building, why was is sold? To keep up with the growth?

They see it in their spreadsheets (the secret ones that no one can see), their dismal participation numbers, in the indifference of their own families toward the sport they claim to steward. And yet, they continue to feed the public a fantasy, peddling inflated fan statistics to networks and media outlets, fabricating a narrative of success that exists only in their press releases.

Even their attempts at social virtue are hollow—DEI initiatives used not to foster inclusivity but to disguise their own moral bankruptcy, their own detachment from the sport they claim to love. How do we use colored people this year is the question, when all you need to ask is how we grow the sport, regardless of color or income. Now with the political correctness need they feel, they ask themselves: how will they pretend to please the pretend decay of their false beliefs of inclusion? Mr. CEO inclusion does not mean including people of color, it means allowing the game to be played by all people. I would include those like you, who never played, but your DEI department would exclude you, you see how wrong you are with DEI while pretending to be good, you are neither.

When Friday arrives, and the non-playing, billboard salesman-CEO signs off on another $2 million payroll for his legion of functionaries, what is being purchased? Not progress, not passion, not a future for the sport. No—what is being bought is silence, complicity, and the maintenance of an illusion that the sport is growing. NO! Mr. CEO, you are lying once again.

The money that should be fueling the growth of tennis is instead the lifeblood of a decaying order, ensuring that those who have failed the game remain ensconced in their delusions of adequacy.

This is the reality of a false nonprofit, an organization that hides behind tax-exempt status while behaving like a profit-driven cartel. Tennis in the United States should be thriving—every resource necessary for its success exists. And yet, it withers. Why? Because the very body charged with nurturing it has instead chosen to smother it.

Reform is not coming. They will not change course. They will continue to hold meetings where nothing of consequence is discussed, continue to devise ways to polish their crumbling fa?ade, continue to pretend that the sport’s slow demise is anything but their own doing.

And the most damning part? The lies have been told for so long that even those telling them believe them. The board members look at one another and see “good guys,” incapable of reckoning with their own failure. Mr. Chairman you lie when you claim 35M by 2035, and? you know that well. So why do you lie?

But if you, the reader, still believe them—if you can attend a local tournament, pay the exorbitant fees, witness the “pay-to-play” stranglehold on youth participation, and still think these people have tennis’s best interests at heart—then you, too, have been deceived.

Look around you. The park’s courts are empty. The television broadcasts are nonexistent. The Miami Open looms, unnoticed, uncelebrated, and unimportant. It is

this week in my hometown.

When the USTA board meets this Friday, they will not discuss their bloated bureaucracy, nor the sport’s crumbling future. They will discuss how best to arrange their next photo opportunity, how to ensure their presence at the bankers’ event this August, and how to stretch the illusion just a little bit further.

Wake up, America. The sport is not dying of natural causes. It is being strangled by the very people entrusted with its survival. And if you cannot see it, then perhaps you have already been infected by the same lie they tell themselves every day.

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

I can be reached at [email protected].

Socrates reminds us:

"False words are not only evil in themselves but they infect the soul with evil."

The USTA is not merely lying—it is rotting from within. The only question left is, how long will you stand by and watch?