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Too bad that 2020 will forever be remembered as the year a huge pandemic hit our country and the world. For U.S. tennis players, I think it should have been remembered for celebrating 40 years of the USTA Adult League program.
This is the story of the program and some of the well known and less weill known people who made and make it happen.
World’s Largest
When USTA executives and volunteers began to warm up to the idea of a national league tennis program in the ‘70s, they had no idea that their initiative would eventually create the world’s largest organized tennis league. I was very lucky to not only become a USTA league participant at various times in my life, but I also had the privilege to work with some of the people that made–and make–the program run like clockwork.
From 2006 until 2010 I worked on the USTA Tennislink Team as the lead for adult leagues and NTRP ratings. By the time I had become professionally involved, the National League program was already 26 years old.
Chronologically, the success story began taking shape in the late ‘70s at a time when some USTA sections already had local…
