USTA bets big on coaching to sustain tennis’s pandemic-era boom

“It literally changed everything for me,” Jessie Weinberg says of the day when a teaching pro in her area emailed to ask if she wanted to take a lesson with him.

It was the late summer of 2020, four months into the pandemic. That spring, Weinberg had joined two mass migrations that were common all around the country at the time. First, she left Covid-ravaged New York City for Goshen, a town of 3,100 in northwest Connecticut. Then, searching for something safe to do there, she made her way to the tennis courts in her housing development. Weinberg, then in her 40s, had played the sport as a kid, but had rarely picked up a racquet since high school. She immediately fell under its spell again.

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But it wasn’t until her first lesson with the pro who had emailed her, Mitch Case, that Weinberg found a new home on the court.

“I feel like Mitch helped me see myself as a tennis player, and not someone who just plays tennis,” Weinberg says.

Weinberg, who teaches at a boarding school, immediately connected with Case’s step-by-step coaching style.

“He was breaking my game down into parts, and really being explicit about how you generate more power, or what your swing path looks like,” she says. “And then doing it over and over again”

“I started to see that this is something I could get better at. I saw my path and it changed me. I know it sounds corny, but it really did.”

This was a long-term strategic decision for the sport... People were just really struggling to find coaches to meet the demand of the players that had come to the game since 2020. Craig Morris, CEO of USTA Coaching

Those words will be music to the ears of anyone in the U.S. tennis community, and especially to those at the USTA who are tasked with growing it. So far this decade, they’ve had a good run. In 2020 and 2021, the social distance the game offered helped draw millions of people like Weinberg to their local courts, and they’ve kept coming in the years since. Tennis has added six million regular players in the last five years, to reach an all-time high of 25.7 people. That inspired a new goal, and a new initiative from the USTA: To have 35 million people playing by 2035.

With growth, though, have come a few growing pains. More players means you need (a) more courts, and (b) more experts to help those players improve, and make them feel the way Jessie Weinberg does, that the game is an essential part of their lives.

To keep on track for its 35 million goal, USTA has taken steps to begin addressing both of those issues this year. In the spring, it announced a $10 million investment in constructing new facilities ands refurbishing old ones. That was followed this summer by the creation of USTA Coaching, described as “a new entity established to elevate and support the coaching community nationwide.”

“This was a long-term strategic decision for the sport to make sure we’re investing in the people who deliver it,” says Craig Morris, CEO of USTA Coaching.

“The data we have on the coaching network is not ideal,” he says. “People were just really struggling to find coaches to meet the demand of the players that had come to the game since 2020.”

“We saw a need to unify the coaching experience, from tennis-seeking parents to full-time pros.”

To that end, USTA Coaching is designed to be a one-size-fits-all Internet platform where anyone who is interested in learning to teach tennis can find an educational package to suit their needs. At the USTA Coaching site, visitors can choose between four programs that target four specific groups of people, in ascending order of expertise.

“Baseline,” which is free, is for parents and school coaches. “Rally,” which is $49 per year, is aimed at “emerging coaches” and part-time professionals. “Pro,” at $149 a year, is for college coaches and full-time pros. “Pro Plus,” at $249 per year, is for “professional coaches who want liability insurance.”

“We’re going to have resources to support people who haven’t had coaching, or been an elite player,” says Megan Rose, managing director, head of business development and operations for USTA Coaching.

“For parents, it will have exercises to take them through games and drills they can do with their kids. In this time-crunch society we’re living in, having someone serve me up information about my kid’s sport is something parents need.”

From there, the goal is to create a holistic program that will include content about everything from equipment to the business of tennis to “empowering girls” to a “robust certification process that coaches will go through” and that will include ways for them to get insurance.

“We’ll be working through facility owners to get their coaches certified,” Morris says. “You’ll start to see the USTA Coaching brand, which will be quality assurance that the programs players are involved meet the standard of the national governing body.”

Talking to adult players who have picked up tennis since the onset of Covid, it’s clear that tennis’s appeal now goes well beyond learning to hit better forehands and backhands, or even winning matches. Social connection, which can be hard to come by in this screen-dominated era, is a big part of what keeps people coming back, and a big part of a teaching pro’s job.

Jill Esposito, who lives in the Orlando, FL area, says she “got a little too comfortable with the lockdown” at home, and “knew that I needed something that would take me out of my comfort zone.”

“Something that put me in the middle of social expectations, athletic expectations,” she says. “It would be a shock to my system, which is what I needed.”

She knew she was in the right place when she walked on to the courts for her first lessons at the USTA’s national campus in Lake Nona.

“There was a big emphasis on getting people just to interact with each other,” Esposito says. “We used to start class by asking, ‘What’s a good thing that happened to you this week?’”

Five years later, Lake Nona’s courts have become a new comfort zone for her.

“There are moments when I realize that the people make me keep coming back,” she says. “I really made nice connections.”

The same has been true for Esther Flores, another Florida resident who took up tennis during the early days of Covid so she could “get outside” again. She liked the mental and physical challenge that learning tennis offered, and has continued to take lessons and clinics each week, along with cardio-tennis sessions. Flores finds that she doesn’t need to compete, or move up the ladder at her courts, to find herself wanting to play, and see her tennis friends, as often as she can.

“We have a group that has played together for two or three years,” she says. “We have the same love for tennis. We have the same addiction.”

So it makes sense that USTA Coaching’s tools for teaching pros begin by emphasizing the personal, rather than the technical, side of the sport. The “High School Tennis” section focuses on three facets of good coaching—Empathy, Active Listening, and Building Trust—that don’t have anything to do with how to hit a serve.

Morris believes the organization’s track record in recent years is reason to be bullish on the future of coaching. While the pandemic gave the game a boost, he believes the USTA’s recent series of programs have also brought in new players, young and old.

“We did a lot of work with getting tennis into schools, exposed a lot of kids to tennis, which we’re really pleased about,” Morris says. “Our World’s Healthiest Sport message is starting to stick. Cardio tennis, team tennis for kids. I think all of those pieces are variables.”

Coaching is the next variable in the USTA’s 10-year-drive to add 10 million new players.

“We do have an aging population when it comes to coaches,” Morris says. “We’re going to be really intentional next year when it comes to recruitment. We want to focus on that next generation that we want to bring into the industry.”

“It’s a significant investment. Coaches at all levels are our heroes.”