Peter Bodo's Tennis World Blog | Drop Shots, or Doctors?

Peter Bodo's Tennis World Blog | Drop Shots, or Doctors?--

This is an old entry of Peter's from before the Open, but, once you get through the initial cat fawning, it's a very provocative look at tennis development, which is probably my favorite topic. This is Peter's take in a nutshell:

My own feeling is that you throw as much money at development as you want—you may as well throw it down the toilet.

Which would mean that even the "paltry" $9 million budget of USTA Player Development (which Tennis Week describes as roughly 4% of USTA annual expenditures) is wasted.

I guess we could try out Peter's theory and just disband High Performance, but that seems a bit drastic to me. I wouldn't dare argue with the premise that world class players are primarily the result of the efforts of parents and personal coaches. But when USTA grants are this restrictive, they have no role in providing opportunity for those with limited funds. And that is one thing the USTA can, and should, do much more of.

I know that the Florida section has, for two years now, provided grants to their Florida Closed winners and finalists (16s & 18s) to help offset the cost of their trips to the summer nationals. This strikes me as a sensible "best practice" that every section should adopt. There is no great mystery why more and more players are gravitating to ITF events and away from USTA ones--the ITF provides "hospitality", (housing and food) for tournaments level 3 and above, dramatically reducing the cost of competing.

But Peter's other point, that producing athletic champions isn't the test of a nation's worth, is very well put, and should be carefully considered by all juniors, and their parents, weighing college vs. pro.