Tennis Is Growing. The USTA Is Not the Reason.

Tennis participation in the United States is rising. Courts are fuller. Families are returning. All of this is welcome news.

But the USTA’s impulse to treat this moment as proof of successful governance is misplaced.

The sport is growing largely because of broader cultural forces—post-pandemic demand for outdoor activity, increased focus on fitness, and grassroots enthusiasm—not because institutional strategies suddenly started working. Tennis leadership did not create this momentum. It arrived late to celebrate it.

That matters because the system beneath the growth remains deeply exclusionary.

Tennis markets itself as accessible and healthy. In reality, it has become increasingly limited to the wealthy. Tournament entry fees, private coaching, academy pipelines, national schedules, and travel expectations resemble a private-school model. Families without substantial disposable income are steadily pushed out.

The middle class is not being welcomed into tennis. It is being priced out.

In that context, celebrating isolated scholarships or pilot programs misses the point. Token access does not offset a structure designed around scarcity. Opportunity is rationed while privilege is preserved.

The problem is compounded by tennis’s insistence on treating boys’ and girls’ development as interchangeable.

Men’s participation numbers are higher, and governance priorities follow accordingly. Women’s incentives are flattened in the name of uniformity. That is not equity; it is inertia.

Other sports have already confronted this reality. U.S. Soccer is the clearest example.

In youth soccer, the women’s game thrives because the college pathway is central, visible, and attainable. That incentive extends well beyond athletic scholarships. Preferred admission, admissions support, and access to elite academic institutions are themselves powerful drivers of participation. Families understand the return on investment, and girls stay in the sport as a result.

Men’s soccer, like men’s tennis, offers fewer scholarships, and development appropriately emphasizes professional pathways.

U.S. Soccer learned this distinction the hard way. When it attempted to force the women’s game into a professional-first model by abandoning the thriving college-focused ECNL, a mass revolt soon followed thereafter. The strategy failed because it ignored what actually motivates female athletes in the United States.

Tennis has learned none of this.

Instead of centering college tennis—particularly for women—the USTA continues to promote professional tennis as the primary measure of success. That ignores basic economics.

Only a tiny, privileged fraction of players can afford to pursue a professional tennis career. Even fewer can sustain one. When Taylor Fritz, Jessica Pegula, and Emma Navarro—each from billionaire families—were semifinalists at a recent U.S. Open, that was not coincidence. It was structure.

Tennis now sells $23 Honey Deuces while fans watch billionaire kids compete in a system that increasingly resembles Panem—lavish spectacle at the top, rationed opportunity everywhere else.

In nearly every other youth sport, parents gravitate toward anything labeled a “college showcase.” Those sports understand that college opportunity—including scholarships and meaningful admissions advantages—drives sustained participation. Tennis continues to underplay that reality and leaves growth on the table.

Governance across the sport reflects this disconnect. Decision-makers disproportionately come from the same affluent circles the system already serves. Rising costs are treated as unavoidable rather than as policy choices.

The result is predictable: an ecosystem that works extremely well for a wealthy few and poorly for everyone else.

Real growth requires lowering financial barriers, investing in public infrastructure, centering college pathways, and designing development models that reflect how families actually make decisions.

If tennis leadership is serious about inclusion, it must start with humility—and with the recognition that the sport’s resurgence is not proof of institutional success.

Absent meaningful change, the governing bodies of tennis risk becoming the biggest constraint on the game’s future rather than its stewards.