Racket Business - Publisher's Notes for October, 2025

US Open - RIP Nikola Pilić - RacquetX - PTR/PPR Int'l Racquets Conference - Things that make me go hmmm...

Author

Rich Neher
October 01, 2025

Hello, dear readers, friends, and racquet sports enthusiasts.

Was your September as interesting as it was for me? Two events stood out for me. On September 10, I took a short flight to Las Vegas and observed the World Tennis Esports Championships at an interesting venue: The Space. See my article Tennis Esports - Serious Tennis Competition in the VR Space this month. The other event was not tennis-related. My friends know how much of a Beatles fan I am. Pat and I went to the Candlelight Downtown LA: Tribute to The Beatles string quartet concert with two Violins, a Viola, and a Cello. Fabulous! I loved it!

Congratulations, Ray!
I want to congratulate the biggest and most tireless supporter of tennis, a volunteer, executive, and friend of Racket Business, Ray Benton, on his retirement. The JTCC CEO has done some remarkable things in his life, like the enormously successful “Discover Tennis” program, and I have a feeling he’s not done yet - not by a long shot.

The JTCC announcement read: After 17 years of unwavering commitment and dedicated service, Ray Benton announced his retirement from Junior Tennis Champions Center (JTCC) effective September 30 and was honored with the naming of the “Ray & Nina Benton Walk of Fame.”

Congratulations, Ray Benton!

Bye-bye, Peter Hurley!
The PTR press release on September 3 came somewhat as a shock:

PTR Announces Leadership Transition. Professional Tennis Registry (PTR) today announced that CEO Pete Hurley is departing the organization.

Lynne Rolley, PTR’s Board Chair, stated, “We are grateful to Pete for his service. Pete has helped guide PTR through a period of transition to PTR’s new headquarters in Tampa, and we appreciate his service. As Pete embarks on this new chapter, we express our appreciation for his service and wish him the very best in his future endeavors.”

PTR will promptly begin the process of hiring a new CEO. In the interim, Martin VanDaalen, a PTR Board member, will step in as Interim CEO to ensure a smooth transition and continued focus on PTR’s mission.

I had few interactions with Peter, but respected him and found him professional and really nice. We here at Racket Business wish him all the best for the next chapter in his career.

I sincerely hope you find value in the October issue of Racket Business. Our aim is to provide you with insights and strategies that will contribute to the growth and success of your business in the competitive racquet sports industry.

Rich Neher
Co-Publisher

Re: US Open


Children from the age of 2 pay the full adult ticket price

I wrote last month:

… The real reason why children over the age of 2 years have to pay full adult ticket prices at the US Open? I guess lawyers told the USTA Board that you can’t encourage ticket holders to get drunk and allow Marijuana smoke wafting through the crowd and over the courts while children are present.

Apparently, I was wrong. The Commish corrected me: “Rich, you have to start thinking like a greedy USTA Executive on this. Children are not allowed to drink a Honey Deuce, or the 10 needed to get a buzz (remember, WHERE’S THE VODKA?). To make up for the lost profits, they decided to charge them up front and make the parents buy full adult tickets for them.”

Hmm, makes sense. No?

Speaking about “Where’s the Vodka?”

Remember? I did a little survey, and everyone I asked at the open thought there is little or no vodka in the cup. Apparently, I’m not the only one thinking the US Open is selling us an inferior cocktail and charging $23.


President’s Box and Celebrities

It really looks like the USTA doesn’t think it can sell tickets to the US Open without celebrities in the best seats and in the President’s Box. I find this such a waste of time and effort. Here is what I would do:

I would invite tennis professionals teaching on America’s public courts, high school coaches, and even juniors to sit in those box seats instead of celebrities who have done nothing to promote tennis and often don’t even play the sport, and receive free tickets.

 RIP Nikola Pilić

ESPN reported on September 23
ZAGREB, Croatia -- Croatian tennis great Nikola Pilić, the first captain to lead three countries to Davis Cup glory and who trained Novak Djokovic in his academy, has died. He was 86. The Croatian Tennis Association said Pilić died on Monday, September 22nd.

Pilić was a French Open singles runner-up in 1973 and the catalyst for the Wimbledon boycott that year. Read more.

RacquetX News

RACQUETX IN THE NEWS

RACQUETX TICKETS ARE LIVE

RacquetX early bird tickets are on sale starting NOW.
What to expect in 2026:

  • More Courts & On-Court Experiences

  • World Class Sessions

  • The Club Summit at RacquetX

  • Expanded Show Floor

Q&A With Jarrett Chirico, Director of Racquets at Royal Oaks CC & President of the Directors Club of America  

Jarrett will be joining us in Austin on October 12th at the RacquetXclubs City Series in partnership with the Directors Club of America.

Tariffs and the Racquet Sports Industry: What You Need to Know

RacquetX and SFIA (Sports & Fitness Industry Association) are teaming up for a two-part live webinar series tackling how tariffs are impacting costs, supply chains, and business decisions across the racquet sports ecosystem.

Part one kicked off on September 30, featuring Bonnie McLaughlin, VP of External Affairs & Industry Relations at SFIA, who broke down the current tariff landscape and explored what it means for manufacturers, retailers, operators, and anyone shaping the future of the industry.

Part two will take place on November 5th, diving deeper into key updates, long-term policy impacts, and answering any questions you might have for Bonnie.

Interested in Sponsoring RacquetX 2026? Click here!

2026 PTR/PPR International Racquets Conference

Things that make me go hmmm…

THE GOOD

San Diego - SoCal’s hotbed of tennis

The San Diego District Tennis Association (SDDTA) announced a “diverse lineup of events designed to engage, entertain, and educate our local tennis community.” Clearly shows how much of a hotbed San Diego is for tennis.

HEAD celebrates 75 years

Penn & HEAD - A Legacy of Tennis
For over 100 years, Penn has been changing the game – from pressurized cans to the first fluorescent yellow ball. Since joining HEAD in 1999, Penn balls and HEAD racquets have stood together on courts worldwide.

As we celebrate 75 years of HEAD innovation, that shared legacy of excellence continues – with Penn balls available on head.com. Read more.

Kyle LaCroix’s Newsletter is worth a good look

Good content, features, calendar, Tip of the Month. All around great read.

Six Years of Recycling at the US Open

Erin, RecycleBall’s Executive Director, writes, “For the sixth year in a row, RecycleBalls has been on the ground at this iconic tournament, collecting used tennis balls and giving them a second life through our recycling network.”

THE BAD

More than 8,000 tennis courts were converted and NOW the USTA says tennis courts are an endangered species?

I understand, this sign originated with the USTA Colorado section. So, the USTA was looking at the massive conversion of tennis courts to Pickleball for years and did nothing. They must have learned about the dire situation from a recent New York Times article.

Crazy, isn’t it? NOW it’s time to rally? Where were you in the last 5-10 years when the majority of conversions happened? Ah, yes, you converted some of your own courts in Orlando, right? Took some kids’ courts of the much-touted Nemour Family Zone. Who cares about kids’ courts? Right?

USTA Coaching with one scary flaw!

USTA Coaching was introduced with big fanfare, a new CEO (Craig Morris), and four “packages for every kind of tennis coach.” From a free BASELINE level to RALLY ($49/year), PRO ($149/year) and PRO PLUS ($249/year).

I felt compelled to look at the insurance offered by USTA Coaching.

  • BASELINE: No insurance

  • RALLY: No insurance

  • PRO: Accident & Liability insurance

  • PRO PLUS:
    General liability insurance plus unlimited additionally insured facilities

    Accident & disability insurance

OK, so far, so good. However, when you work in California, there’s one expensive insurance package you need: SAM. I googled “Who needs SAM insurance?” Here’s the information:

Organizations with staff who regularly interact with potentially vulnerable individuals, such as those in healthcare, childcare, education, social services, and non-profit sectors, need SAM (Sexual Abuse and Molestation) insurance to cover legal and defense costs arising from claims of sexual misconduct, abuse, or molestation. This specialized liability insurance protects businesses and organizations from potential financial ruin due to allegations, whether true or false, and helps cover settlements and judgments. 

Here is what we know about the topic:

  • RSPA offers an affordable option to get a $1million SAM insurance policy for members.

  • PTR - Now also offering SAM insurance. Policies are $99.

  • If you work with kids in public places in California, there’s no way around SAM insurance.

  • History tells us, when something starts in California, it’ll grow to other states like a brush fire.

Individuals having to buy SAM insurance on their own are looking at very expensive policies. If you want private SAM insurance through the marketplace, a $1million policy will cost you thousands. Worse than that, all public school districts in California require anyone who utilizes a facility at a school to have a $2million SAM Insurance policy. That policy will cost over $10,000. This applies to all programs. It will crush anyone doing after-school programs.

So, what does a USTA Coaching teaching pro do when trying to create after-school programs in California? Move out of state? Change profession?

The Commish has researched the topic and told me it is unlikely that the USTA will be able to offer SAM insurance because of their history with sexual molestation cases. Ouch. Is that what they call a conundrum?

Are the New York Mets cursed after they hired ex-USTA CEO Lew Sherr?

So, on June 12, they still had the MLB’s best record and looked bound for the playoffs, World Series in sight. And then things went south. What happened?

Lew’s LinkedIn photo

Well, I talked it over with the Commish, and he was adamant that it had to be the fact that the ex-USTA CEO joined the baseball club as President, Business Operations, right around the same time.

Or did the new mustache and beard jinx the Mets? Who knows…

THE UGLY

Tennis Stats with bogus numbers - again?

I made the case many times that tennis participation numbers in the U.S. are bogus. In the financial world, they would call this “cooking the books,” but I want to call it “creative accounting.” And I’m pretty much convinced that's why Lew Sherr had to leave his CEO post and change sports.

Let me explain.

Without stepping on Keith Storey’s toes too much (the President of SMS (Sports Marketing Surveys, suppliers of participation data through the PAC Study, probably has sleepless tennis nights already), I want to point to the two areas that give me confidence about my opinion that the data is bogus.

Premise: The USTA published in February that tennis participation is at an all-time high at 25.7 million players. Of those, they determined that first-time and returning players brought 6.3 million players to the game in 2024. They also noted that core players (those playing 10+ times in the past 12 months) grew to a record 13 million, representing 50 percent of all participants.

So, every year since COVID, the participation numbers have increased. Let’s keep that in mind because it becomes important later.

  1. Ball Shipments
    Let’s try to estimate how many tennis balls need to be sold to support 25.7 million players. Why don’t we start with the core players? I distinguish between core and hardcore players, the latter being the adult league players (USTA and other leagues) playing on several teams every year. With league matches, practice, and fun drop-ins, they probably play 3 times a week on average. I’m guessing that’s about a million players of the 13 million they count as core.

    - 1 million hardcore players: If a million people play 3 times a week, they would probably buy 2 cans of balls per month, since their comrades also provide balls, don’t you think? Let’s say times 12 months, that’s 24 cans a year times 1 million, that would mean hardcore players buy 24 million cans of balls a year, times 3, that’s 72 million balls.
    - 12 million core players: I’ll assume they buy only 5 cans of balls a year. That’s another 60 million cans or 180 million balls a year.
    - The other 12,7 million players that are not core? I’ll assume they only buy 1 can of balls a year. That’s 12.7 million cans or approximately 38 million balls.
    - Organized Events (tournaments, leagues, NJTL, etc.)? I’m estimating they use about 2 million cans of balls a year, or 6 million balls.

    The sum of all those estimates: about 99 million cans or 297 million balls. That would mean every one of those 25.7 million players uses/buys about 11.5 balls every year.

    Now get this: According to the Racquet Industry Research Group (formerly TIA), the industry shipped approximately 96 million balls last year. If I use the above average of 11.5 balls per player and year, I would end up with only 8.3 million players. How do you explain that?

  2. Adult Attrition
    It was a secret only whispered on the floors of USTA national headquarters in White Plains or in the sections when I was involved with the USTA League system from 2006 until 2010: The overwhelming majority of adult beginners leave the sport for good within a year. Some said 75%, others mentioned 85%. In other words, a lot. Those numbers were never published, and I’ve been questioning whether or not the surveys took them into consideration.

    Keith Storey will probably say yes, they are reflected in the results but I have serious doubts. If election pollsters can be off by a lot, as we’ve seen over and over again during Presidential elections, why can’t the PAC Study be off by a lot, as well? I don’t trust that survey voodoo at all, to be honest.


    So, last spring, then-USTA CEO Lew Sherr made a career-ending mistake by admitting the unthinkable for the first time ever during an interview. He said, “…last year, organically, we got 4.8 million new players into the sport, but then 98% of them leave. The difficulty is not getting people into the sport, it’s keeping them.” Here is the article: Tennis, everyone: USTA CEO Lew Sherr on the new strategy for the growth of tennis.

    You cannot tell me those many millions of lost players are reflected in the survey year after year. Together with the above-mentioned discrepancy for ball shipments, that’s a reason for me to say the participation numbers are bogus and someone should look into it.

    Side question: Is that why Lew Sherr ultimately had to go?

    Another question: If the participation numbers are bogus, what else is published by the USTA that’s bogus? Can we trust anything they are saying? I realize, to keep their nonprofit status, they have to produce participation growth year after year. Good enough motivation to “cook the books?”

Asian Pickleball Stats - same source as tennis stats?

So, this Pickleball bigwig, called Seymore Rifkind, founder of the World Pickleball Federation, goes to Asia and comes back with a bag full of numbers, backed by the PPA.

Even considering the size of Asia and the population explosion there, I cannot believe they have 282 million people playing Pickleball regularly. My question:

Were these numbers produced by the same source the USTA is using for their participation numbers? (That would explain it)

Mr. Rifkind, you have some explaining to do!

Shout-Outs + One Revealing Quote + One Funny Tweet


Big Shout-Out 

to The Tennis Podcast for their September 22 episode “Has Laver Cup won us over?” with an excellent Matt Futterman summary phoned in. Catherine, David, and Matt look back on the Laver Cup, Iga Swiatek’s title in Seoul, and a couple of ATP events in China. 

Big Shout-Out 

to Cliff Drysdale for retiring at age 84 after the 2025 US Open. The longest-serving ESPN Commentator had been on the job for 46 years. Cliff wrote me once that he used to read TENNIS CLUB BUSINESS, my previous newsletter, from cover to cover.

All the best, Cliffy! Don’t be a stranger.

Cliff Drysdale

Big Shout-Out

to the PTR/PPR. Lynne Rolley revealed that membership is bigger than ever at 25,000. Wow. Congratulations!

One Revealing Quote

Billie Jean King about Pickleball on the CNBC Sport Videocast:

“I don’t like the sound that much as long as I play tennis. For me, personally, when the ball hits the strings, it’s magical. And with Pickleball, I don’t have that.”

One Funny Tweet