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    It’s Tennis vs. Pickleball vs. Padel. Or Is It?

    SAN DIEGO — The official name of the facility is the Barnes Tennis Center, but once through the front doors, it quickly becomes apparent that it might want to consider expanding its branding.“What are you playing today?” a receptionist at the front desk asked of a father and his adult daughter dressed in what could pass for traditional tennis clothes.“Pickleball,” answered the daughter.“Have you tried padel yet?” asked the receptionist.“No, but it’s on the list,” she said. “I hear it’s addictive.”Such conversations and choices, which have been standard in other parts of the world for several years, remain rare in the United States. But they will become more common soon. The Barnes Center, with its menu of racket-sport offerings, looks like a template for the future as private clubs and public facilities strive to be more things to more people, protecting themselves economically from shifting tastes while trying to defuse some of the rising tension between the grand old game of tennis and fast-growing newcomers like pickleball.“I have a good friend who calls this the Disneyland of racket sports,” said Ryan Redondo, chief executive and general manager of the Barnes Center.The coronavirus pandemic, by increasing demand for outdoor activities, gave some racket sports a boost. But that unexpected surge seems to have staying power, which is giving some in the industry hope.The new arrival is padel, a fast-paced hybrid of tennis and squash contested on a glass-walled court that already has an estimated 20 million players worldwide.Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times“People get fearful, but I do think overall, we will find that this is good for the industry and will lift all racket sports,” said Joe Dudy, president and chief executive of Wilson Sporting Goods. “I’m not saying people won’t be worried, but I don’t think they should be. There was a big battle between tennis and pickle when pickle started the growth momentum, and there are more tennis players now than when that momentum started.”Tennis participation has indeed continued to grow in the United States after years of stagnation and was up to 23.6 million players over the age of 6 in 2022, according to a report by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. Pickleball, once a regional oddity with a quirky name, is booming and not just among the gray-haired set as it continues to expand its reach into schools. It had 8.9 million players in 2022 according to the organization — way up from 4.8 million in 2021 — with other studies showing significantly higher numbers.The new arrival is padel, a fast-paced hybrid of tennis and squash contested on a glass-walled court that already has an estimated 20 million players worldwide, according to figures provided by Wilson.Developed in the late 1960s and early ’70s in Mexico, padel has much in common with platform tennis, which was invented in Scarsdale, N.Y., in 1928. Both use perforated paddles and are generally doubles games, but platform tennis is primarily a cold-weather game played on a gritty, elevated surface that can be heated from below to melt snow and ice.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesPickleball, once a regional oddity with a quirky name, is booming, and not just among the gray-haired set.Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesPadel first became popular in Spain and Argentina and is now growing quickly in other parts of Europe, including traditional tennis strongholds like France, Italy and Britain.Though there are only about 200 padel courts in the United States — most of them in private residences — the sport has begun to attract significant investment, and the pace of court construction has accelerated with facilities opening in Florida, California and the New York area. Redondo projects that there could be as many as 40,000 courts in the country in 10 years.“It’s a rackets world,” said Dan Santorum, chief executive of the Professional Tennis Registry, which certifies teaching professionals, who are increasingly seeking certification in multiple racket sports. “A lot of the search firms are looking for triple threats when they are looking for teaching pros for clubs. It’s no longer just a director of tennis. It’s a director of rackets.“I think what’s going to happen is the triple threat in the North is going to be tennis, pickleball and platform tennis, and in the South, it’s going to be tennis, pickleball and padel, although you will see some indoor padel as well in the North.”Both padel and platform tennis use perforated paddles and are generally doubles games played in spaces considerably smaller than tennis courts.Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesSome major projects are in the works: none bigger than Swing Racquet + Paddle in Raleigh, N.C., which is set to build 28 tennis courts, 25 pickleball courts, 16 padel courts and three beach tennis courts on a 45-acre plot of land with a 100-year lease from the city. Swing has signed deals with Wilson and Sweden’s Good to Great Tennis Academy, which will provide instruction on the Swing campus and whose leadership includes Magnus Norman, a former No. 2 in the ATP rankings who has coached leading players Robin Soderling and Stan Wawrinka.Rob Autry, Swing’s founder and chief executive, said ground has been broken on the campus, which is set to open to the public next year to a projected one million visitors annually for tournaments and other events, including concerts.“The idea is to bring in all these racket and paddle sports under one roof and really democratize all these sports and lean into their differences and their own cultures and give them their own little neighborhood,” Autry said in a telephone interview.If it works, the plan is to open more modest multisport Swing facilities in other locations, primarily in the Sun Belt to start.In the meantime, the Barnes Center is running on 16 acres in San Diego. A public facility, it is still tennis-centric with 25 courts and is a hub for juniors. Last year it was the site of an ATP 250 tournament and a WTA 500 event that attracted a top-tier field.“I have a good friend who calls this the Disneyland of racket sports,” said Ryan Redondo, chief executive and general manager of the Barnes Center.Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesBut the center also has four new lighted pickleball courts and seven new padel courts built on the edge of the property that was not suitable for tennis courts.That is a best-case scenario at a moment when tensions elsewhere over the use of available space continue to rise between tennis and pickleball players. Similar turf battles have been waged in Spain in urban areas between tennis and padel. Though pickleball and tennis can coexist on the same courts with blended lines, that often leaves both communities dissatisfied. But the alternative, for tennis, often means losing ground, particularly when clubs can fit four pickleball courts on one tennis court and often generate more revenue.The United States Tennis Association, under its former executive director, Gordon Smith, showed no interest in an entente cordiale.“Back when Gordon was there, pickleball was Satan,” said Stu Upson, the outgoing chief executive of USA Pickleball, in a 2021 interview.Smith said he had only one issue with pickleball. “Losing real estate,” he said. “If someone wants to build pickleball courts, great, but if someone has four tennis courts and wants to make them into pickleball courts, that’s different.”Since Smith’s 12-year tenure ended in late 2019, the U.S.T.A. has softened its approach, building bridges with USA Pickleball and, more symbolically, building eight pickleball courts and four padel courts at its sprawling national campus in Orlando, Fla.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesJacob Langston for The New York Times“The pressures that tennis facilities are under to be able to diversify their offerings to generate more revenue are, I think, very real,” said Craig Morris, the U.S.T.A.’s chief executive for community tennis.Morris, like Autry, is convinced that this is not a zero-sum game: that one racket sport can lead to another as long as there is ample court space available for all the options. But Morris said the U.S.T.A. was involved in research on skill acquisition with Michigan State University to see if pickleball or padel, with their shorter swing arcs, were effective pathways to tennis.Redondo, a former all-American tennis player at San Diego State who now plays much more padel than tennis, is seeing crossover and is also invested in padel as a part owner of the San Diego Stingrays, a franchise in the new Pro Padel League set to start play this month.“Our padel players are often on the tennis courts right before or right after they play padel, so there’s a really good mix and synergy there,” he said. “My belief is that pickleball and padel will start doing that as well and then you will start to have this circulation of these racket sports that can thrive together without taking tennis courts away.”To test out the vision, Redondo and I played all three sports in 90 minutes last month: starting with padel, continuing with pickleball and finishing with tennis, by far the best suited to singles.Tennis participation has continued to grow after years of stagnation and was up to 23.6 million players over the age of 6 in 2022.Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesThe sounds are distinct:from the high pitch of a lightweight paddle meeting a plastic whiffle ball in pickleball to the percussive pop of a denser paddle meeting a decompressed tennis ball in padel to the more familiar thwock of strings driving a ball in tennis.The swing lengths, like the court lengths, vary. A tennis swing is more rotational: loading the legs and then turning the hips with the shoulders following. Padel is routinely more acrobatic, with 360-degree turns and the need to adjust to the different spins off the glass. Pickleball feels more static with compact swings but also more manic at times with its abrupt changes of pace that demand both deft, considered touches and fast-twitch reactions near the net.“But the contact point, the pure sweet spot, felt pretty much the same in all three sports,” Redondo said.Tennis, the oldest of the three, does have one major element the others do not allow: an overhead serve. I finished our 90-minute tour with an ace, which was more down to Redondo being a good host than to my power and precision but, in a world of racket-sports change, felt reassuring just the same. More

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    USGA and R&A Propose Changes to Golf Balls to Limit Driving Distance

    Driving distance has been steadily increasing, and a proposal on Tuesday by the U.S. Golf Association and the R&A could affect elite players within three years.Elite golfers, who have increasingly used head-turning distances on their drives to conquer courses, should be forced to start using new balls within three years, the sport’s top regulators said Tuesday, inflaming a debate that has been gathering force in recent decades.The U.S. Golf Association and the R&A, which together write golf’s rule book, estimated that their technical proposal could trim top golfers’ tee shots by an average of about 15 yards. Although golf’s rules usually apply broadly, the governing bodies are pursuing the change in a way that makes it improbable that it will affect recreational golfers, whose talent and power are generally well outpaced by many collegiate and top amateur players.But the measure, which would generally ban balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour, among other testing conditions, could have far-reaching consequences on the men’s professional game. Dozens of balls that are currently used could become illegal on circuits such as the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, as the European Tour is now marketed, if they ultimately embrace the proposed policy change.That outcome is not guaranteed — on Tuesday, the PGA Tour stopped well short of a formal endorsement of the proposal — but the forces behind the recommendation insisted that the golf industry needed to act.“I believe very strongly that doing nothing is not an option,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, said in an interview. “We want the game to be more athletic. We want it to be more of an elite sport. I think it’s terrific that top players are stronger, better trained, more physically capable, so doing nothing is something that to me would be, if I was really honest, completely irresponsible for the future of the game.”The U.S.G.A.’s chief executive, Mike Whan, sounded a similar note in a statement: “Predictable, continued increases will become a significant issue for the next generation if not addressed soon.”In the 2003 season, PGA Tour players recorded an average driving distance of about 286 yards, with nine golfers typically hitting at least 300 yards off the tee. In the current season, drives are averaging 297.2 yards, and 83 players’ averages exceed 300 yards. The typical club head speed — how fast the club is traveling when it connects with the ball — for Rory McIlroy, the tour’s current driving distance leader at almost 327 yards, has been about 122.5 m.p.h, about 7 m.p.h. above this season’s tour average. Some of his counterparts, though, have logged speeds of at least 130 m.p.h.At the sport’s most recent major tournament, the British Open last July, every player who made the cut had an average driving distance of at least 299.8 yards on the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. When the Open, an R&A-administered tournament, had last been played at St. Andrews in 2015, only 29 of the 80 men who played on the weekend met that threshold.Jordan Spieth during a practice round at the Players Championship earlier this month. Dozens of golf balls currently in use could become illegal on the PGA Tour and other circuits.Cliff Hawkins/Getty ImagesThe yearslong escalation, spurred by advanced equipment and an intensifying focus among professional players on physical fitness, has unnerved the sport’s executives and course architects, who have found themselves redesigning holes while also sometimes fretting over the game’s potential environmental consequences.When the Masters Tournament is contested at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia next month, for instance, the par-5 13th hole will be 35 yards longer than it was last year. The hole, lined with azaleas and historically the course’s easiest, will now measure 545 yards; the full course will run 7,545 yards, up 110 yards from a decade ago.Faced with the distance scourge well beyond Augusta, golf’s rule makers considered a policy targeting club design. They concluded, though, that such a reworked standard would cause too many ripples, with multiple clubs potentially requiring changes if drivers had to conform to new guidelines.“If you don’t, you’ll end up with a 3-wood that could go further than a driver, and that was a very good point, and that could have affected three or four clubs in the bag,” Slumbers said. Instead, after years of study and debate, the U.S.G.A. and R&A settled on trying to urge changes to the balls that players hit.The rules currently permit balls that travel 317 yards, with a tolerance of an additional 3 yards, when they are struck at 120 m.p.h., among other testing conditions. The existing formula has been in place since 2004, and Whan has said it is not “representative of today’s game.”The proposal announced Tuesday is not final, and its authors will gather feedback about it into the summer. Although some members of the game’s old guard have openly complained about modern equipment and the governing bodies’ response to it — the nine-time major champion Gary Player fumed last year that “our leaders have allowed the ball to go too far” and predicted top players would drive balls 500 yards within 40 years — the executives are bracing for resistance that could prove pointed.“We have spoken to a lot of players, and as you can imagine, half of the world doesn’t want to do anything and half of the world thinks we need to do more,” Slumbers said.The PGA Tour, filled with figures who believe that fans are dazzled by gaudy statistics and remarkable displays of athleticism, did not immediately support the proposal. In a statement on Tuesday, the tour said it would “continue our own extensive independent analysis of the topic” and eventually submit feedback.The tour added that it was “committed to ensuring any future solutions identified benefit the game as a whole, without negatively impacting the tour, its fans or our fans’ enjoyment of our sport.”The debate may be more muted in some quarters than others, but the surges in distance have not been confined to the PGA Tour. Between 2003 and 2022, the R&A and the U.S.G.A. said Tuesday, there was a 4 percent increase in hitting distances across seven professional tours. Only two of the scrutinized circuits, the Japan Golf Tour and the L.P.G.A. Tour, posted year-over-year declines in driving distance in 2022. More

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    The Great U.S. Open Ball Debate of 2022

    The Open is the only Grand Slam tournament where women use different balls than men, and the Wilson ‘regular-duty’ ball has gotten into some players’ heads.Tennis players are the Goldilocks characters of sports.The balls are too big, or too small. The courts are too fast, or too slow. It’s too cold, or too hot, or too sticky, or too sunny.“Some weeks you don’t play well, and you got to blame it on something,” joked David Witt, who coaches Jessica Pegula, the American who reached the quarterfinals on Monday with a win over Petra Kvitova.And so it has been at the U.S. Open this year as the women — well, some of them — have waged a rebellion over the Wilson balls they have used for years at the tournament. This is the only Grand Slam event where the women and the men use different balls.These yellow spheres are loved and loathed.Pegula, who has lost just one set in four matches, and that one in a tiebreaker, happens to love the balls. Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, has called them “horrible.” That is so tennis. Rarely is there any consensus. Players often make contradictory complaints in the same tournament, or even the same day, about the same thing.You are officially forgiven if you have lived your life thinking all tennis balls are created equal but with different names and numbers stamped on them. But now, a quick tutorial in tennis ball technology.The men at the U.S. Open use what is known as an “extra-duty” ball, which means the felt on the outside of the ball is woven slightly more loosely than the “regular-duty” ball the women use.Iga Swiatek and her sports psychologist have talked about the challenges posed by the regular-duty balls.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesEverything else about the balls is the same — their core construction, their size and weight, how they rebound and how quickly they deform, according to Jason Collins, the senior product director for racket sports at Wilson Sporting Goods.However, the regular-duty balls “play faster,” Collins said through a spokeswoman for the company. Felt that is woven more tightly doesn’t fluff up as much and can wear away, so there is not as much friction when those balls make contact with the ground or the strings of a racket.The additional friction of a fluffy ball allows players to create maximum spin. Those who rely heavily on that spin can struggle to make a regular-duty ball travel the way they want it to, especially after a few games, when the ball begins to lose whatever fluff it had right out of the can and gets smaller.Players who hit a flatter ball, like Coco Gauff, or Pegula or Madison Keys, don’t have this problem as much. But some still do. Paula Badosa, who was seeded fourth and lost in the second round, hits as flat as anyone. She said she hated the balls.“You feel more like you’re playing Ping-Pong sometimes,” Badosa said after her first-round win. Two days later, she was out of the tournament.Another point of complication and confusion: Regular-duty balls are always used on clay courts and other surfaces that are moist because they don’t collect the moisture the way the looser felt of the extra-duty balls do. Extra-duty balls are the balls of choice for outdoor hardcourts, like those at the U.S. Open, except when they are not.And then there is one more complicating factor: Tennis is run by seven separate organizations, with tournaments all over the world, many of which have different companies that pay for the right to supply the balls. That means players can end up playing with a different ball from a different manufacturer from one week to the next. And every ball is just a little bit different, and behaves differently depending on heat and humidity and air pressure.According to the United States Tennis Association, which owns and organizes the U.S. Open, the women have played with a different ball than the men for as long as anyone can remember; the WTA Tour has always wanted it that way, and the tournament abides by the tour’s preference.Stacey Allaster, who is the U.S. Open director and was the chief executive of the WTA from 2009 to 2015, said the sports science experts on the women’s tour have long felt that the faster, more aerodynamic ball helps limit arm and shoulder injuries.Every year, Allaster said, the U.S.T.A. asks the WTA what balls it wants to use, and the answer has always been the same. “As far as we know, a majority likes it, so we could end up trading one problem for another.”Amy Binder, the chief spokeswoman for the WTA, confirmed that the players and the sports science teams have favored the faster regular-duty balls, but executives have heard from “a select number of our athletes that they would like to consider a change.”The WTA will continue to monitor and discuss the matter, Binder said, though she said the decision on the ball ultimately rested with the U.S.T.A.The ball controversy has had previous iterations. After Ashleigh Barty won the Australian Open in January, her coach, Craig Tyzzer, said she would never win the U.S. Open as long as the tournament used the Wilson regular-duty balls. (Barty retired in March at age 25, while ranked as the world No. 1.) The latest gripes started earlier this summer, when the players began playing with these balls in the lead-up to the U.S. Open.Tennis, though, is all about making adjustments and finding solutions as the conditions change throughout a match, and a tournament, and a season. The challenge can be as much mental as it is physical.A tennis umpire examined one of the tennis balls during a fourth-round match.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesPegula kept switching rackets in her match against Kvitova on Monday, experimenting with different string tensions in search of one that felt just right as the humidity and the condition of the balls changed. Looser strings hold the ball for longer (think of a trampoline) and provide more time to spin the ball.“Something feels off, you have to make a change,” Pegula said “It’s important not to let it frustrate you too much.”That has been the challenge for Swiatek, who travels with her sports psychologist, Daria Abramowicz. They have talked plenty about all the challenges created by these balls that Swiatek so despises.Abramowicz does not tell Swiatek not to think about the balls because then the first thing she will think about is the balls.“It’s like I would tell you right now not to think about a blue elephant for a minute, and literally the first thing popping into your mind is this blue elephant,” Abramowicz said. “You accept the thought, because it’s already there, and move on, refocus, find anchor in something else.”Pegula and Swiatek will meet Wednesday in the quarterfinals, a match that could become a test between Pegula’s flexibility and Swiatek’s ability to think about other things besides the balls. Or maybe the balls will have nothing to do with the outcome.What will happen with the balls next year is anyone’s guess, but Allaster said the WTA would need to decide what to do soon. Wilson has already been asking which balls the U.S.T.A. needs in 2023.Someone is not going to be happy. More

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    Golf Courses Are Adjusting to Longer Shots

    With advances in equipment, balls are going farther, posing risks to people who live nearby.Thanks to advances in golf equipment, shots travel farther and higher than golf course designers had envisioned years ago. With enhancements to both clubs and balls, even duffers can hit for greater distance.As a result, courses are being reimagined to keep them challenging for elite players. But in the process, golf course architects are looking anew at golf course communities — often developed decades ago — to ensure that the game remains safe for people in adjacent homes. Adding to the trend of longer shots is the fact that more casual players are getting fitted for their clubs, which may improve distance and accuracy. And many golfers are more fit, spending several days a week training.“There’s a whole crop of people who can hit the ball much, much farther,” said Jason Straka, a golf course architect based in Dublin, Ohio, who is also president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. “It’s not necessarily bad that balls can go farther; there’s just no consensus on what to do about it.”How much farther balls travel depends on the player, of course. Todd Beach, the senior vice president of research design and engineering at TaylorMade Golf, said that in the 40 years since the Carlsbad, Calif., company began operations, clubs have moved from steel to graphite and titanium. (TaylorMade just introduced “Carbonwood,” a new line of drivers that, as the name suggests, is composed of carbon.)Professional golfers can now drive a ball roughly 40 yards farther than they did in the past, Mr. Beach said, while average players are hitting drives that travel a few extra yards. That’s why architects are rethinking distances, hazards and screening as they renovate courses and golf communities. To be sure, the risk to homes, residents and pets remains low. According to Forrest Richardson, a golf architect based in Phoenix, “it’s only occasionally that the ball can go farther and cause a problem.”Nonetheless, older communities are examining how to improve safety. Because property setbacks cannot be altered, a starting point is to move the tees closer to property lines so that golfers hit away from residential areas. In addition, sand bunkers or water hazards may be incorporated closer to homes so that players aim in a different direction, Mr. Straka said. Trees or other vegetation may also align a golfer closer to where he or she should be hitting.“We might put something in the way of where a lot of people might otherwise want to land their shot to force a golfer to hit in a more controlled way,” Mr. Richardson said.In other instances, Mr. Straka said, it may mean straightening out a so-called dogleg hole by shortening it, which may mean transforming it from a par 4 to a par 3.Another option for older communities, which often have houses on both sides of the course, is to make the courses smaller, said Art Schaupeter, a golf course architect based in St. Louis. To renovate those courses to accommodate bigger swings, “we are converting some by making them into smaller courses, whether eliminating some holes or taking a regulation 18-hole course and converting it to a par 3 course” or one that is a so-called executive length to allow more distance from the existing homes.Ultimately, “it’s all about examining the landing area, where balls are most likely to go off line,” said Ron Despain, a senior vice president of Troon Golf, which operates golf courses worldwide.Nets are another option for residential areas and courses adjacent to public spaces and roads, but these are costly because they need to be at least 120 feet high. Adding in the cost of steel poles, Mr. Straka said, nets can exceed $1 million. And apart from the cost, a net’s aesthetics often mar the open spaces associated with golf course life.The risks also extend to driving ranges and practice areas. Three Carpenter, who manages the Crow Valley Golf Club in Davenport, Iowa, faced the problem when land adjacent to Crow Valley’s driving range was getting developed for offices and townhomes. For one of the areas, the developer planned a project 15 feet from the property line, Mr. Carpenter said, and the initial solution was to build a berm. But because even that was insufficient to shield all errant balls, the driving range now requires a so-called “limited flight ball” which cannot travel as far, a solution that some golfers dislike because it is an imperfect measure of a swing, Mr. Carpenter said. Separately, the club has purchased additional land abutting the driving range because buying the property was less expensive than constructing an extensive net.There is by no means a one-size-fits-all solution, and not just because golf courses vary in shape and length. Factors like the terrain, climate, wind conditions and altitude all affect how far a ball can travel. In addition, designers are looking at who the players are — amateurs or more elite. New developments can anticipate these issues. Jim Birdsall is one of three co-owners of TPC Colorado, a multiuse community in Berthoud, Colo., that includes a championship golf course that can be stretched to just under 8,000 yards. That length, he said, can accommodate longer drives. But, he said, added length comes with the additional expense of maintenance, including water and fertilizer.He said that newer balls, which seek to add spin to a shot, can be problematic. “If a weekend warrior doesn’t know how to control the spin of a shot and they overcook it, there can be unintended consequences,” including the errant ball that winds up in someone’s yard.The harder hitting among elite players is leading some to contemplate dialing back equipment. The U.S. Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, Britain’s governing golf entity, two years ago suggested studying the issue — the Distance Insights Project.Mr. Beach of TaylorMade said his company is working with the golfing organizations but hopes there are no restrictions on advances in equipment, which he said would be costly and difficult to monitor. But for some golf course architects, technical advances are not the primary motivation for golf course renovation. “Golf courses are natural. They evolve and they can get worn out,” Mr. Schaupeter, who designed TPC Colorado, said. “There can be just one house that gets a dozen balls in their backyard over the weekend. That’s when you might shorten the hole or move the tee.” More

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    Tennis, Everyone?

    Furi Sport, a new tennis equipment and fashion line, wants to do nothing less than change the game.The first time Erick Mathelier visited Greenwich, Conn., was an eye-opening experience.“The houses were humongous,” he recalled, sitting outside a Lower East Side cafe one morning in June. “I was like, ‘Wow, people live like this?’” To the eyes of a teenager from the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, Greenwich was a window to a different world, one where the houses weren’t just bigger, the dreams were.His first glimpse of this rarefied enclave on the Long Island Sound came through tennis, in a van on the way to an Ivan Lendl tennis club for a match.Tennis was a gateway for Mr. Mathelier. He recalled his first time on an airplane at age 14 for a trip to a tournament in Bermuda. “It’s funny, I was teased because I was so scared to fly, and by 14 most of my friends had flown,” he said. The sport was his ticket to a scholarship to a Division 1 college, Saint Francis in Brooklyn Heights. Two decades later, Mr. Mathelier, now 42, is a tennis professional — off the court.Last month, he introduced Furi Sport, an equipment — rackets, strings, overgrips and bags — and apparel line with his business partner Michelle Spiro. The idea behind the company is to break down the entry barrier to tennis, to shake off the elitist country-club flavor that insulates the world of Wimbledon and its all-white dress code.Black is the defining color of the Furi Sport T-shirts, hoodies, bags and rackets. At $199, the rackets are priced with inclusivity in mind, competitive with, yet slightly below, the top of the competition (Prince, Head, Wilson, Yonex, Babolat). Mr. Mathelier knows from experience that tennis can take you places, if you can gain access to it.How Others LiveMr. Mathelier grew up in a predominantly Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn, the only son of a single mother from Haiti. He was an active child whose first love was baseball. As a 10-year-old, he was one of two African American kids on a team in Sheepshead Bay.Then, in the summer of 1989, Yusef Hawkins, a Black teenager from East New York, was brutally murdered by a mob of white kids in Bensonhurst. As racial tension surged in the city, Mr. Mathelier’s mother pulled him out of baseball, fearful that Yusef Hawkins’s tragic fate would befall her son.“I was so sad,” Mr. Mathelier said. “I needed something to do.” Deeming himself too short for basketball, he set his sights on tennis. Why? He’s not sure. His mother told him to crack open the Yellow Pages and find a way to play, which led him to the Prospect Park Tennis Center.The tennis club, situated at the nexus of the neighborhoods of Park Slope, Little Caribbean and Crown Heights — which at the time was years away from being gentrified — drew a diverse bunch.“Just seeing how people lived definitely changed my perspective,” Mr. Mathelier said.Mr. Mathelier had no professional tennis ambitions until he met Ms. Spiro by chance at a fashion event in 2014. By then, he had hung up his racket to focus on a series of start-ups.Ms. Spiro, 53, spent 25 years in corporate fashion in increasingly senior buying and sales roles at Macy’s, DKNY, Polo Ralph Lauren Underwear and Calvin Klein Men’s Underwear — companies that were held by public giants like Sara Lee and Warnaco. By 2015, she had become intrigued by the street wear movement.“The luxury market was all about showing how much money you have through what you were buying,” Ms. Spiro said. “What I loved about street wear is that it was this exclusive inclusivity. The currency changed from cash to being in the know.”Mr. Mathelier’s teenage tennis journey resonated with Ms. Spiro, who observed that Supreme, Palace and A Bathing Ape were anchored in skateboarding. Moncler and The North Face grew out of outdoor recreation, and Carhartt and Timberland were backed by construction. Tennis had no street cred.Ms. Spiro called Mr. Mathelier and said, “I have this crazy idea.” How about a rare Black- and female-owned tennis brand, based in New York City and built on the idea of taking the sport out of the country club?The company’s clothing collection speaks to tennis’s off-court culture.via FURI SportThe vibe is more streetwear than country club.via FURI SportTennis for EveryoneHigh-quality, competitive equipment was central to the idea. But there’s a reason the sport is dominated by a handful of big brands. “Everyone is just stuck with what equipment that they’re used to,” said Mr. Mathelier, who was committed to Prince before founding Furi. “Even though they may complain about the newer version of their racket, they just play with it.”Then there’s the fact that what looks like a relatively simple piece of equipment requires navigating a byzantine network of Asian manufacturing cliques. Ms. Spiro and Mr. Mathelier enlisted his childhood friend from Prospect Park Tennis Center, Gerald Sarmiento, a pro-shop owner, coach and master stringer who knows the nuances of rackets better than his own backhand. He told them not to bother unless they came to the market with something that gives the player an “ooh-ahh feeling,” Mr. Mathelier recalled.When it came time to develop a racket, Mr. Sarmiento connected them with Yasu Sakamoto, a Japanese racket maestro with 40 years of experience consulting for companies including Wilson.Through several years of development, frustrating trials and errors, they landed on a proprietary design with energy return technology and vibration reduction technology that gave Mr. Sarmiento that special feeling. Two models, a lite and a pro version, are for sale on the Furi Sport website.The next challenge was recruiting other players. “People would be like, ‘Oh, that’s cute,’” Mr. Mathelier said of pitching Furi’s racket. Once, at the McCarren Park courts in Brooklyn, he approached a friend and her hitting partner.“He looked at me like I was a traveling salesperson with my trunk,” Mr. Mathelier said. “Well, now he plays with Furi.”For every dismissal, there was someone willing to help. A tweet sent to Caitlin Thompson, the publisher of the independent tennis magazine Racquet, led to a meeting. “We became hitting partners because I was really intrigued about the idea of new equipment in the space,” said Ms. Thompson, who has used the Furi rackets, grips and bags.She sees Furi’s opportunity in its positioning as a beginner-friendly option for recreational players, a rare direct-to-consumer brand (think of what Casper did for mattresses) in a market steeped in pro-shop culture.“So much of tennis is catered toward this notion of professional athletes,” Ms. Thompson said. “This is a racket that Roger Federer plays with. This is the racket that Serena Williams plays with.” She said that Mr. Federer’s racket is so heavy, most recreational players can’t lift it above their heads. Yet pro shops can’t keep it in stock because he plays with it.The Social ComponentFor Mr. Mathelier, Furi is a tool to reach kids growing up in circumstances similar to his own. Junior rackets will be coming for fall. Furi is sponsoring three junior tennis players — Carter Smallwood, Olivia Medrano and Bode Vujnovich — and donates grips, strings and rackets to youth programs, including Kings County Tennis League, which began in 2010, when its founder Michael McCasland posted a sign offering free tennis lessons on a dilapidated court near the Marcy Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant. It has since grown into a tennis program for kids living in Brooklyn public housing that serves more than 200 people.“You can use tennis to get out,” Mr. Mathelier said. “It is really good at creating structure, building strategy. A lot of former tennis players end up becoming successful businesspeople.”The lifestyle portion of Furi Sport draws on Ms. Spiro’s expertise. Luis Santos, a designer who has worked for Christian Lacroix, Kenzo and Paco Rabanne, created a collection of clothing that is not performance wear — that’s still in development — but speaks to tennis’s broader, off-court culture. T-shirt dresses, shirts with cutout shoulders and wide-leg, tapered khakis and cargo pants can be worn by anyone heading to a post-match drink. Or anyone who wants to be in Furi’s club.A blue tennis ball with a smirk is Furi Sport’s trademark, “symbolizing the fierce energy and velocity that comes from within,” according to the company’s website. The name Furi was chosen partly because “fury” evokes an attitude of fire-in-the-belly grit essential to a sport in which every match results in one winner and one loser.“You have to be comfortable with losing,” Mr. Mathelier said. “We have a saying internally,” Mr. Mathelier said. “‘Dream big and let it fly.’” He directed attention to his forearm, where those words have been immortalized in a subtle, faded tattoo. More

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    In Naming a New Chief Executive, the U.S.G.A. Looks to the Women’s Game

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Naming a New Chief Executive, the U.S.G.A. Looks to the Women’s GameWith the L.P.G.A., Mike Whan grew women’s golf. Now he’ll try to solve some of the sport’s most contentious debates: outrageous distances off the tee and a return to more traditional sites.Mike Whan with the L.P.G.A. in 2015. He will take over the U.S.G.A. sometime this summer.Credit…Chris O’Meara/Associated PressFeb. 17, 2021, 11:02 a.m. ETIn an imaginative decision for one of the most resolutely traditional organizations in American sports, the United States Golf Association announced Wednesday that its new chief executive would be Mike Whan, who has spent the last 11 years as the resourceful commissioner of the L.P.G.A. Tour.Whan, 56, will replace Mike Davis, the top executive at the U.S.G.A., which conducts the United States Open and 13 other national championships. Five months ago, Davis, a 30-year U.S.G.A. employee, revealed that 2021 would be his last year with the organization. In January, in a surprise, Whan announced his intention to leave the L.P.G.A.In an interview Tuesday, Whan said he called Davis before accepting the U.S.G.A.’s offer.“I said, you know me and you know the job, is this a bad idea?” Whan recalled. “Mike said, ‘Stop talking, you need to get into this job.’”Whan added: “I can stay in the game I love. I can have a seat that can make a real difference.”Stu Francis, the U.S.G.A. president, said Tuesday that he had been thinking about Whan as a possible Davis successor since Whan made a presentation to the association’s executive committee four years ago. Noting that the U.S.G.A., a nonprofit with annual revenues of roughly $225 million, invests in myriad golf initiatives and helps writes golf’s rule book, Francis called running the U.S.G.A. “a multifaceted job.” Of Whan, Francis added: “He has all the skill sets and has demonstrated those skill sets.”Whan, who will assume his U.S.G.A. duties at an unspecified date this summer, took over a struggling L.P.G.A. in 2010 and guided it through financial challenges, eventually expanded the tour from 24 events to 34 and nearly doubled the prize money. During the pandemic, when many tournaments were not held, Whan was able to preserve event sponsors, and the purses for the 18 tournaments the L.P.G.A. did host were not reduced.As L.P.G.A. commissioner, Whan has spent years in regular contact with leaders of golf’s governing bodies, including the U.S.G.A., the PGA Tour and the R&A, the organization that conducts the British Open.But at least in America, Whan will soon be the point man for a variety of issues facing golf, the thorniest of which is whether the sport’s leaders should enact new rules to inhibit the prodigious distances off the tee that can be achieved by technologically advanced golf balls and clubs. A recent report sponsored by the U.S.G.A. and the R&A, a co-partner overseeing the rule book, hinted at potential changes in equipment restrictions.Asked about the report on Tuesday, Whan said: “There’s little argument that we’ve known distance is a problem for a long time.” He added, “I think change is coming and needs to — how grand that change is has yet to be determined.”But Whan, who worked for Wilson Sporting Goods and TaylorMade Golf before joining the L.P.G.A., said there would still be room for innovation in the vast golf equipment market.“I think all the people that hear about change think, ‘Oh, no, it’s over, they’re going to put a governor on and everybody’s going to have all the same distance,’” he said. “Nobody has any interest in doing that to either the game or the people that make the game exciting.”Whan will also be central to ascertaining which courses will be selected as U.S.G.A. championship sites, particularly when it comes to the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women’s Open. Some of the most controversial decisions in Davis’s tenure stemmed from a desire to branch out from an established, if unofficial, rotation of traditional sites for the association’s premier events. That led to the U.S. Open’s being played in largely untested venues like Chambers Bay in Washington State and Erin Hills in Wisconsin with, at best, mixed results.Lately, the U.S.G.A. has signaled its inclination to return to golf courses with a history of hosting the national golf championship, something endorsed by Francis and Whan.“You’re going to see much more of a locking in on traditional sites,” Francis said.Whan, who will be just the U.S.G.A.’s eighth chief executive, said players wanted the same thing. Cognizant that this year’s U.S. Women’s Open will be contested at the Olympic Club in San Francisco for the first time (it has hosted the U.S. Open five times), Whan said, “I can promise you right now there are players on the L.P.G.A. dreaming of Olympic.”Davis, who is leaving the U.S.G.A. to pursue his interest in golf course design, endorsed Whan’s selection.“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Mike Whan for many years, and I view him as a trusted, strategic leader who has a proven track record of building collaborative partnerships,” Davis said in a statement. “I know the U.S.G.A. will be in great hands, and I look forward to partnering with Mike to ensure a smooth and successful transition.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More