THE HONORABLE THING TO DO USTA BOARD IS TO RESIGN. By Javier Palenque

I cannot help the need to explain to my followers just how revealing is the WWE and Netflix broadcasting deal to help you understand just how incapable the leaders of the USTA are. (see this link if you have not read my article).To do that let me define honor first, so we have a mutual understanding of the word and why I demand it from the board.

Honor is a quality of a person that is both of social teaching and of personal ethos, which manifests itself as a code of conduct, and has various elements such as valor, chivalry, honesty, and compassion. It can also be a quality of character entitling a person to profound respect; nobility of mind or spirit; honorableness, uprightness; a fine sense of, and strict adherence to, what is morally right or just. The opposite of honor is ignominy or infamy. So, what I am asking the board is to do what is right and honorable and that is to leave the game to those of us who care and think. It is time for them to RESIGN.

There are three fundamental issues you need to recognize to grasp just how bad this new Netflix deal is for the USTA leadership, their deceit is revealed, and it cannot be covered up anymore. I am demanding their resignation for everyone to see and understand why:

1.     The terrible governance structure of the USTA.

2.     The lack of competence of the CEO and Board.

3.     The oppression their ineptitude puts the sport in.

POOR GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE OF THE USTA

The current Chairperson has been in a leadership position for the past 15 years, the same is true for the current CEO. I have been writing to the USTA for six of those years. If this were a normal for-profit business, as the highest-paid executive and highest honorary position, they would be both fired for devaluing the value of the property, the US Open, in the eyes of the marketplace.

It is the equivalent of your managers destroying your property and leaving you with a lower-priced asset today than when you hired them. By positioning the sport only to corporations and extremely wealthy individuals, they have missed the largest streaming vehicle to reach more people, Netflix, and skipped the largest generation, Millennials. This is very revealing as bureaucrats do not create value other than for themselves, and that is why if the sport is run by incompetent people and the board represents no one, you get what is called the status quo.

A group of Ol’ Boys who are the only ones who benefit from their positions at the expense of the sport, and no one cares, not the Chairperson or board. How are they allowed to do this, you may ask? because they cover for each other and are accountable to no one. This governance structure needs to change as the marketplace validates everything I state here.

THE LACK OF COMPETENCE OF THE CEO AND BOARD

Normally competent people know that they do not know everything, and the more they know the more they realize just how little they know, so the smart ones surround themselves with people smarter than them to learn more. In the case of the USTA, since neither represents anyone, an interest, or a group of investors, they all settle for the mediocrity of common thinking and lack of accountability and that is the expressway to mistakes and hubris.

The financials prove so, you do not have to take my word for it. The key question here is, who pays for such a level of incompetence and what is the consequence of them being inept? In a normal business, they would have been let go in year one of them being there, at the USTA the Chairperson and CEO hold the two most powerful positions and have done collectively the most damage to the institution and of course the sport. But they are not smart enough to realize this and have the audacity to be brazen about their lack of knowledge, skills, and ignorance of business, and yet nothing happens to them when they should be fired for destroying the sport for the next generations. To validate this all you must do is check how many players go through ages 8-18 and keep playing. The number is so low that it is less than one thousand kids, in a country of 60M tennis age kids.

THE OPPRESSION OF THE SPORT.

When the leaders of the best-funded sport not-for-profit are unable to read or foresee the future to position the sport for better days, their lack of intelligence and skill achieves the exact opposite which is the oppression of the sport caused by the wrong decisions that they make daily.

Thanks to the CEO, today the game has never been more expensive to play, the demographics have never been easier to read, and the technology has never been more front and center to use and yet both the CEO and Chairperson failed at reading the trends and positioning the sport even while having a cell phone in their hands (the technology and doing nothing in 20 years). This is called ineptitude.

Of course, if they only knew how many people complain about the USTA, how many people are shut down or banned, or how many people are coerced to remain quiet if their livelihood depends on the USTA for tournaments or other sources of income. Please you do not have to believe me, just read the NYT article on how they defend themselves in sexual harassment lawsuits and conclude what else they do that we do not know about.

Yet, neither of the two leaders has the valor to accept a board meeting in which I will hold them accountable for everything they fail to do and the funding that they dilapidated. They hide hoping no one notices. What do you think happens to all the people that are not listened to? What do you think is the cost of their negligence to the sport? Who will pay to have this fixed? From whose funds will this be rectified? This is how they manage accountability, they run away from it and since they control things, not one of them stands up to face fair questions, they squirm in silence.

THE HONORABLE CHOICE IS FOR THEM TO RESIGN AND LET INTELLIGENCE PREVAIL.

Well, you see, they have devalued the sport to the point that those who love it cannot afford to go see the US Open, they have ignored the flawed competition system that subtracts young players rather than adds them, they have skipped two generations, and going on three, they have aged the sport, they have wasted the vast resources the sport has in the wrong things and people, they have sold all events and indebted the organization to cover for their horrible mistakes, they have hired their incapable friends only learn that they have left the game with no future and the US Open to corporate fans that don’t play tennis. 

When a parent like me demands accountability, they all hide, every one of them, the CEO, the Chairperson, and the board members, like kids afraid to be scolded in the most pathetic display of executive cowardice I have ever seen in America. How can they be running the world's best-funded not-for-profit with that level of amorality?

They are responsible for leaving the game with no future, young people, or funds, they have created and nourished a culture of welfare that is against our ethos. Because of all this, they need to leave the sport to those who do not need to be served by the sport. Through the deal between Netflix and the WWE, the marketplace has left the Ol’d boys exposed for what they are, all they have left is incompetence and old age. Please do not believe me or take my words as the gospel, open your eyes, and see for yourself.

I want them out of the sport and so should you, they have caused harm for generations and have gotten paid to do so, it is simply disgusting. Please RESIGN all of you RESIGN.

I say NO to ineptitude and YES to growing the game.

I can be reached at jpalenque@yahoo.com