THE USTA’S NEW NATIONAL CAMPUS COULD CHANGE THE AMERICAN GAME
An American hero, an aspiring politician and a great sports team all knew it.
Then again, everybody knows it – folks should come together and be on the same page.
Founding father Patrick Henry said, “United we stand, divided we fall.” Hilary Clinton wrote a book called “It Takes a Village,” and a basketball team – the NBA Champion Golden State Warriors – were fueled by their inclusive motto – “Strength in Numbers.”
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Now America’s venerable tennis federation has gotten the message. The USTA will be bringing much of the game together in a sparkling new 162-acre, $60 million campus in the village of Lake Nona, Florida, near Orlando: knock your socks off.
The compelling site should shift the landscape of the game. After all, its backers say Lake Nona will provide tennis lovers with just about everything they want (well, except a US Open trophy). Here there will be an astounding 102 courts – hard courts, indoor courts, green and red clay courts and 16 short courts for kids and families. America’s Player Development Program (which seeks to bring us another Sampras or two) and the USTA’s critically important Community Tennis Division will both be based there. Collegiate and league teams alike will travel there to compete. There’ll be suites in a large executive office and sweets in an inviting cafe. There’ll be a tennis university and access to a center for sports medicine. You’ll see lobs from league warriors, labs for tennis nerds, lockers for everyone and a celebrated lodge – the Lake Nona Lodge – for travelers.
Clearly, Lake Nona accentuates just how far, in 135 years, the USTA has come. At first the United States Lawn Tennis Association was just a bunch of club folks in the northeast. There was a dusty office in New York City, down on Broad Street, with only two employees – the boss and his secretary. Eventually, the USTA burgeoned to become a major player in a balkanized sport (think ITF, ATP, WTA, USPTA, PTR). In American tennis, the USTA became everything to most everyone everywhere. There were 17 sections, thousands of employees, countless initiatives, groups and sub-groups – even a committee on committees.
Key USTA outposts dotted the land. There were sites in frigid White Plains, New York, historic Princeton, New Jersey, trendy Boca Raton, Florida, hardscrabble Carson, California, and, of course, in raucous Flushing Meadows. You needed a road map. Now, many a USTA road will lead to Lake Nona.
Long-time tennis observer Ron Cioffi said, “What I really like about Lake Nona is getting all ages and levels of tennis intermingling in one facility…adult league players will be inspired by the hot-shot juniors, the juniors will be inspired by collegiate matches, the Tennis on Campus players can find out about league play, etc.”
“That’s 100 percent right,” adds Kurt Kamperman, the head of the USTA’s community division. “Players at Lake Nona are going to feed off of each other. When a league player who’s playing a 2.5 tournament watches an 80-and-over championship and sees how vital they are, it’ll be inspiring. There’s a synergy.”
Still, Kamperman is critical of tennis, which, he notes, “has made only seven or eight changes in the past 100 years…While we live in a transformative world with cutting-edge businesses like Uber and Airbnb, grassroots tennis is still living off the old tennis boom of the ’70s and ’80s.”
To Kamperman, the Lake Nona initiative “brings two things to mind – innovation, and the next generation.
“The average age of our teaching pros is over 50. We just haven’t attracted the next generation of coaches, teaching pros, officials, event managers and retailers. We need an infusion of new blood, and we want to use the USTA National Campus as an experiential learning center. People will come to do apprenticeships and take management courses before they set out to introduce people to tennis. That’s why we’re building this place. It won’t just be a place to run events. A lot of people think we’re just building this giant tennis center to host all types of events, but that’s only a small part of what we’ll be doing.”
To many, Lake Nona is destined to become a galvanizing mecca for the sport – a tennis hub to ignite interest far and wide. Kamperman confides, “Let’s face it, we’ve been trying to fulfill our mission from a four-story office building in White Plains, New York – that’s not the center of tennis. We have to be able to be in touch with our consumers. We could do a much better job getting closer to our customers, who, after all, are the people we work for. Now we’re going to have a center that will attract over 100,000 avid tennis players every year.”
Sounds like quite a little village to us.
