Why do most American adult beginners leave tennis again within a year?

Earlier this year, USTA CEO Lew Sherr committed a huge unforced error. The internal Q+A interview was titled Tennis, everyone: USTA CEO Lew Sherr on the new strategy for the growth of tennis. For some reason, they took the publication date off that interview on the USTA website but since I wrote about it at length in our May issue (Publisher’s Notes May 2024: USTA CEO confirms Participation Numbers Are Bogus?), I assume it was published in April this year.

Here is the passage he probably wished he could delete from that interview:

Q: That said, tennis has seen a consistent increase in participation across each of the last four years.
Sherr: That’s true, and we’re thrilled with that. But 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.

So, the CEO of the USTA has now, for the first time, ever, acknowledged what some of us were privileged to know for quite some time: The majority of adult beginners are leaving the sport within a year. When I worked on the USTA Tennislink Team, from 2006-2010, that number was whispered to be more than 70%. Now you know how high the attrition really is.

Bogus Participation Numbers

Today, I don’t want to just ask why most of those 4.8 million new players are still counted in the latest participation numbers. You don’t believe me? Here is the link to the Tennis Participation Report 2024. It states:

Thus, based on a population of 308.5 million U.S. individuals ages 6 and older, the estimated number of tennis participants in 2023, accounting for margin of error, is 23.8 million +/- 600K. Overall U.S. Tennis Participation. There were six million more U.S. tennis players in 2023 than in 2019.

Now, everyone following my writings since 2014 knows that those TIA-provided tennis participation numbers are completely and utterly bogus in my opinion. I have laid that out multiple times and long ago came to the conclusion that they provide the numbers the USTA wants to see and needs to justify wasting hundreds of millions of dollars in the last 20 years.

Why have all those millions of newcomers left tennis already?

That’s the 4.8 million dollar question now, isn’t it? Many so-called experts have chimed in and the answers are mostly ridiculous in my opinion. No one believes that Pickleball paid them off to play PB.

Lately, another thought had crossed my mind. It is common knowledge that the number one reason why adult tennis beginners in the United States are having the hardest time finding anyone to play with is the unwelcoming nature of our sport. I know there are exceptions here and there where clubs are committed to helping beginners find partners and matches but that is not the norm at all.

Meet Mindy, age 24

Mindy, a young female adult in Southern California (my current home state) wants to play tennis. Doesn’t have the funds to join a club or hire a pro at $150 an hour. Goes to a public park orientation, loves it, and joins some group lessons at the very beginner level. Pays $100 for 5 lessons. Pays another $100 for 5 lessons at a higher level and loves it even more. Let’s say, Mindy is now a 2.0 who was bitten by the tennis competition bug. Where would she find a match? The Meetup groups at that level are too lame. She clearly is not a total beginner anymore. The USTA leagues start at level 2.5. So she takes some more lessons in the parks and hits a million balls against a wall. Her last pro tells her she is a 2.5 now. Woohoo.

Our young Mindy now decides to play USTA Adult League and self-rates as a 2.5. Tries to sign up for a team. Not so easy. The last thing league team captains want is a self-rated player on their 2.5 team. They want to go to Sectionals and Nationals so they need to do whatever it takes to get the highest-rated 2.5 who is almost a 3.0 on their team. Cheating is almost mandatory for captains if they want to achieve that goal. No one wants her on their team. She tries to network with other women but no one wants her in their clique either. It’s like a big ‘L’ is stamped on her forehead. If a woman is not at least a 3.5 she’s being ostracised by every other woman she meets.

Imagine a (very real) situation where a player gets bumped down. She is left to wilt on the vine as if she has some incurable STD because she can’t play with her friends. 

It’s now almost a year since Mindy had started taking lessons. She’s very discouraged by the general unwelcomeness of tennis in her area. Then her friend Judy tells her about that Pickleball group that just started up in her neighborhood. Judy’s words: “Come check us out, we have a paddle for you.” The rest is history as they say.

Goodbye, Mindy. Tennis will never see her again.

Does the USTA Adult League system make beginners leave tennis?

Many of you have read my article on tennisplayer.net A Brief History of USTA Adult Leagues and NTRP Ratings. Yes, I am a fan of adult leagues. It’s one of the biggest tennis programs in the world if not THE biggest. You have local league teams that duke it out to go to area playoffs, Sectional Championships and, finally, Nationals, the big carrot dangling in front of every captain and player on a team.

Adult League is the big cash cow for the 17 USTA sections. They need that money and do everything to sell their leagues. Everything? Check this out:

1. A SoCal team captain who complained about unfair treatment by the USTA staff was allegedly made the target of physical attacks by opposition players and, finally, was banned from playing USTA League.

2. A Texas league captain who was found out by a reputable researcher to be the biggest professional cheater was investigated and left unpunished. He is still captaining so many teams, that he is reported to be quite the money-maker for his section.

3. The SoCal section CEO throws thousands of players (including many USTA members) under the bus by championing a prep school’s destruction of 16 perfect semi-public tennis courts in favor of an athletic center so the section’s league teams can play on other prep school courts that are inaccessible to the general public.

4. SoCal League Coordinators are allowed to play on teams in the leagues they are coordinating and some allegedly know how to game the system and favor their own team.

Shall I go on? Knowing many league players in SoCal and a few other sections, I recently came to the conclusion that the USTA Adult League has the effect of a drug. Many players involved in it become unsocial and sometimes downright hostile to lower-level players and beginners. And then there is another effect of that “drug” USTA League: It is quite destructive to the rest of the tennis-playing community in their area. See 3. above.

I think it is conceivable that the USTA Adult League system is at least partly responsible for millions of adult beginners leaving our sport within one year. Because it is the money maker for each section, the urge to funnel every new player to leagues is hard to resist.

So, 98% of 4.8m new players have left tennis. That’s 4.7 million bodies, folks. Where did they go? Could it be that the majority of them went to start playing Pickleball where the USTA Adult League has only a minute presence to date?

I’m sure the USTA is planning to be that big presence in Pickleball Leagues because they (the sections) are cash-hungry. They are already running Pickleball test leagues in some sections.

Our friend the Commish had his own take on the situation: