USTA's Focus on Player Development
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 12:58PM CAtennis "We want to help them with the resources. USTA has given us in player development resources, and we want to use the resources that we have" - Patrick McEnroe, Sep. 6, 2010.
As a follow up to this interview as well as its outlined roadmap, CAtennis.com thought it'd be wise to look at how the USTA is spending its available resources in order to "do what's best for the players". With a "we report, you decide" attitude, we looked at the USTA's latest publicly available tax records (tax year 2009) in order to determine how the USTA is utilizing the resources on player development.
Here are some interesting nuggest of information (2009 figures):
Revenue: $193,278,828 (Part I; Line 12)
Expenses: $184,592,013 (Part I; Line 18)
Total Assets: $180,852,047 (Part I; Line 20)
Net Assets: $120,699,832 (Part I; Line 22)
Revenue Derived From Tournaments: $168,508,214 [query: is the USTA pushing for more junior tournaments - regional, sectional, national, local - because competition is good for players or because more tournament fees is better for the organization's bottom line?]
...breaking fown the expenses (Part IX)
Organizational Grants: $45,209,977
Individual Assistance: $1, 793, 770
Officer/director compensation: $4,871,145
Other salaries and wages: $32,796,359
Travel: $10,136, 808
"Other" (???): $10,504,496
... breaking down the Assets (Part IX):
Cash: $293,937
Savings: $32,051,051
Investments (public securities): $109,508,516
Land/buildings/equipment: $36,839,238 [i.e., vast majority of the USTA's assets is in fairly liquid form - easily convertible to cash or cash equivalents]
$1,120,340 of the total individual assistance expenses ($1,793,770) goes to player development grants (Schedule I, Part III). In other words, 00.5796% of the total revenues go to actual individual player development. On the other hand, Patrick McEnroe's total compensation was $1,106,853 (i.e., 00.5726% not counting items such as travel, lodging, etc. that may fall into the USTA's expenses - PART IX).
Your thoughts?
Reader Comments (11)
Sheeesh! Patrick McEnroe's total is now 1.1 mill.....and he couldn't teach my Little Tennis class. Don't recall anyone he directly developed, do you?? Interesting that the salaries total more than what goes directly to developing players...well, ok, just interesting but NOT surprising!!...Just sayin'
How do european countries approach player development financially? Seems like our report card is poor if you look at the current top 100 ATP guys as the final result of the last 15 years of US player development. Why?
Tweener, for one they don't really have a concept of amateurism. That means that the players can support themselves through earnings such as from club matches. Second, the clubs and the federation often times offer support - for example, in some countries junior lessons/expenses are subsidized by the club (through membership). Clubs pay someone to take all the juniors from a club to tournaments. Also, foreign countries may have a different view when it comes to patronage (e.g, arts)...so you find wealthy people offering support (eg Tursunov's development was bankrolled by a wealthy Russian - that almost never happens here). Lastly, it's a question of motivation - it's not that we don't have good players (we do); it's that the benefits of quitting outweigh the benefits of playing through the satellite/challenger levels unless you're very wealthy. As stated in previous article, the USTA should put more money in incentivizing playing at the higher levels. They pour money into early development and then, when it matters most, players are cut loose. It takes 4 years of playing on the tour to break through and not a lot of people have the funds necessary...but it appears that the USTA does.
out of curiosity, can you estimate how much it would cost a player to fund him/herself for one year on the pro tour (with the goal of eventually breaking through to the top 100) - I assume it would be alot.
I don't have to estimate..USTA averaged it to about $140,000/year
http://assets.usta.com/assets/1/15/USTA%20College%20Varsity%20Analysis%20of%20College%20vs%20Pro%20FAQ.pdf
median total FOUR year debt accrued for medical school graduates in 2010 was about $150,000 for public medical schools
(median one year tuition - just tuition - for medical school was about $28,000 per year, then add $$ for books, housing, food etc)
law school costs about $120,000 for the three years of law school education
So, just to try to play on tour for ONE year costs the equivalent of a full medical school or full law school post graduate education? Hmmmmm, something to think about. You say it takes about FOUR years of playing on tour just to give yourself a tiny miniscule hope and a prayer of breaking through? So that costs $140,000 X 4 to roll the dice against the entire world's pool of tennis talent?
Seems worth it, right?
CAtennis slapping us in the face with cold hard reality again - no sugar coating things on this website :)
Life's hard
SOMEone has to shed the light on the cold, hard truth of our beloved sport! thanks, CATennis, for your willingness to do just that!