usta texas year in review - USTA.com

Kenny Mc’s
corner
By Ken McallisteR
execUtive director, UstA texAs
Presented by:
Our 2010 Texas Section Yearbook. This is our ninth year to have it included as a portion of our official
magazine. We wish to say a special thank you to TennisLife Magazine for a partnership that has put
us in a class by ourselves in serving Texas tennis players.
We invite you to enjoy finding last year’s adult rankings, award recipient write-ups, the USPTA Texas
leaders, reference lists of state-wide volunteers and programs, our current USTA Texas leaders, 2008 league
winners, 2008 Team Tennis Youth winners, Texas Tennis Hall of Fame recipients, program descriptions, our
wonderful sponsors, and pictures of happy tennis players. We strongly believe in the historic relevance and
documentation of our annual award winners, rankings, volunteer leaders, and stories of each year.
So we invite you to put this on your coffee table or mantle and read at your leisure. Save your yearbooks to one place so that
you may some day look back and enjoy the memories and remember why tennis is the greatest sport for youth, adults, friends, and
family.
Tennis Growth Continues
Since the boom time of the 70’s and 80’s, tennis has not had such resurgence as it has now. In fact, tennis is now enjoying a second
boom since those days.
It started with a report from the Tennis Industry Association at the end of 2009. Tennis participation had reached a 25 year high
of 30 million players which successfully reached the 30 by 2010 goal set over six years ago. Although frequent player numbers are
not up, play occasions are. At that time, the latest figures were that tennis was up by 12% from 2008 to 2009 and 43% from 2000
through 2009.
Then, during the USTA Annual Meeting in March, even better news about tennis growth was revealed by the Sporting Goods
Manufacturer’s Association. In a comparison of all of the traditional sports, tennis is the only growth sport of all the traditional sports.
Except for Racquetball at 2%, the Sporting Goods Manufacturers survey show that tennis is the only sport showing growth over the
last nine years at 43% growth. Football, baseball, golf, softball, basketball, and gymnastics have all suffered a decline in participation
during the same period.
Johns Hopkins research shows tennis as the leading heart-healthy sport among the same list. An 88% growth in the sale of youth
rackets from 2003 through 2008 bodes well for the future of tennis as well.
Unlike the boom of 30 years ago, our current efforts with the CTA Expansion Plan, Quickstart, and all of our other programs give
us a stronger infrastructure on which to maintain the growth. Although the economic climate could have some negative effect, our
sense is that tennis is a sport easy to participate in good times and bad. The details for these reports are on our website or www.
usta.com.
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2009 year in review