How to Build Fruitful Cooperation Between Tennis Coaches and USTA Player Development

I received an interesting opinion on the post “Can American Tennis Coaches Develop New Champions With Help of USTA Player Development?” from Ray Brown, PhD. I found his view very thoughtful and decided to publish as a separate article. Read it carefully.

America has always been the country of the rugged individualist, and we still are.

Great players, scientists, artist, coaches, educators, writers, engineers, managers, etc. are rugged individualists who come out of nowhere; they always have. The exact origin of champions will always be a bit of a mystery because of the intangibles of the human personality. To find champions in any field, we must cast a wide net that allows for intangibles to make their mark. The next great tennis champion may be a ragamuffin from nowhere, USA, but only if they are able to find their way into the “system”.

Of particular note is that the corporate culture of the USTA only invites the nice polite parents, players and coaches to participate in their bounty. The thorny personalities, common to great achievers, are immediately eliminated by bureaucracies because the bureaucrats have a very thin skin and cannot endure frankness of the ilk of Robert Lansdorp. But frankness is essential; blunt appraisals are essential for discovery and to facilitate the entrance of gifted individuals into tennis or any enterprise. Great thinkers, and players, are thorny, like Robert, and thus do not fit into the amicable mold required to be a part of the thought process of a bureaucracy. They are unwelcome in the peace-loving, don’t make waves USTA.

Because of their hubris, bureaucracies justify replacing the collective minds of millions with the thought process of a few like-minded individuals. In this action, a bureaucracy becomes a filter that is more likely to obstruct the emergence of talent than to facilitate its emergence because it cannot consider intangibles, think outside-of-the-box or avail itself of serendipity. From where does this hubris arise? It arises from individuals who assume that they are the all-knowing “tennis gods” entitled to legislate behavior rather than facilitate creative thinking. The USTA’s legislative point-of-view justifies obstructing parents and coaches from developing players by excluding them from financial support and facility support.

Hubris always justifies a bureaucracies’ desire to a dictator rather than a facilitator.
But dictators do not inspire cooperation, especially from highly qualified individuals. This is yet another reason why the USTA should be a facilitator, not a legislating dictator. By dictating how player development will proceed, not only do they lose the benefits of more minds, the creativity of the thorny individual, the energy of volunteers, but they the lose cooperation of capable individuals, engender antagonism, diminish their goodwill and spawn public confrontation and condemnation. This is never good for an organization’s public image.

The bottom line: We must cast a wide net (that may even include some degree of randomness) in order to account for the intangibles of the human personality and spirit in our search process, unlike what the USTA Player Development does today; we must include thorny, disagreeable and diverse personalities in the development process unlike what the USTA does today; we must include many minds in the search process, not just a chosen few, unlike what the USTA does today; and, be a facilitator, not an all-knowing self appointed “tennis god” as the USTA Player Development is today.

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