USTA Foundation Seeks To Shape The Next Frances Tiafoe

COLLEGE PARK, MD – JULY 27: Frances Tiafoe hosts a youth tennis clinic after announcing the launch of The Frances Tiafoe Fund, Thursday, July 27, 2023, at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md. (Julia Nikhinson/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The Washington Post via Getty Images

Frances Tiafoe is among a handful of American male hopefuls vying to win the 2025 U.S. Open. His bid to win his first Grand Slam title begins today against Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka.

Days before his opening-round match, Tiafoe co-hosted an event with Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud to introduce “Poulet à la Tiafoe,” a reimagined peanut butter stew, and a mocktail called the “Big Foe Fizz.”

Curating haute cuisine is far different than Tiafoe’s childhood experience when he slept in a storage room of a Washington, DC, area tennis center, where his father worked as a janitor.

Eventually, Tiafoe’s parents, immigrants from Sierra Leone, got him into the Junior Tennis Champions Center (JTCC) in College Park, Maryland.

“Without the JTCC, I don’t have a career , quite literally,” Tiafoe told reporters during the DC Open last month.

Today, the USTA Foundation announced the launch of a new Community Impact Hub initiative in 10 communities across the country, including JTCC. With an initial $6 million investment, the goal of this pilot program is to serve as a blueprint on how to grow the game in under-resourced communities and embed tennis as a catalyst for holistic community change, potentially discovering the next Tiafoe.

“Community Impact Hubs are designed to really multiply the impact of of the work that’s already happening to support kind of the ecosystem around these young people,” said Ginny Ehrlich, CEO of the USTA Foundation, in an interview with Forbes.com.

The USTA Foundation supports 270 community-based organizations nationwide through its National Junior Tennis & Learning (NJTL) network. Organizations submitted proposals to participate in the Community Impact Hub pilot program. The following are the 10 pilot locations:

• Advantage Cleveland Tennis and Education – Cleveland
• Atlanta Youth Tennis & Education Foundation (AYTEF) and L.E.A.D. Center for Youth – Atlanta
• Cincinnati Tennis Foundation – Cincinnati
• Houston Tennis Association – Houston
• Junior Tennis Champions Center (JTCC) – College Park, Md.
• MaliVai Washington Kids Foundation, Inc. – Jacksonville, Fla.
• New York Junior Tennis & Learning – New York City
• Sloane Stephens Foundation – Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
• Tennis Memphis – Memphis, Tenn.
• Woodcraft Rangers – Los Angeles

Ehrlich said the hubs will dramatically scale the foundation’s efforts to offer access to tennis and all of its benefits to communities that need it most through no-cost school and family play opportunities, coach training, and investment in courts in under-resourced communities.

Breaking Barriers And Bridging Gaps In Tennis

The launch of this project coincides with this year’s U.S. Open theme, “75 Years of Breaking Barriers,” which celebrates tennis legend Althea Gibson and other players who broke through color barriers.

According to the USTA Foundation, the initiative is projected to reach over 630,000 young people and families, implement new youth tennis programming in over 570 schools, refurbish at least 160 tennis courts, and recruit over 2,000 new coaches in Hub communities nationwide by the end of 2027.

WTA player Hailey Baptiste is a product of the JTCC, and so is her coach, Franklin Tiafoe, Frances’s twin brother. Both are evidence of the NJTL’s success at offering kids opportunities through tennis.

“What we know is that these young people do so well. Ninety-one percent of the young people in our program make gains in social, emotional well-being and skills related to social and emotional well-being,” said Ehrlich. “Ninety-nine percent complete advanced grade levels on time, and 91% graduate from high school. And all of these numbers are tracking well above their peers who are coming from the same kind of financially challenged households.”

Research supports that participation in youth sports contributes to emotional, mental, and physical development. However, inequities in access to youth sports persist and not all youth have equal access to sports.

Arthur Ashe: Pioneer In Diversity And Equity

In the current political climate, the phrase ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ has come under fire. As politicians legislate an end to DEI programs, the USTA Foundation is committed to an initiative inspired by sports legend Arthur Ashe Jr., who believed that “tennis is the world’s greatest teacher. ”

Ashe, Charlie Pasarell, and Sheridan Snyder founded the NJTL in 1969, a time when many schools in the South were still segregated and decades before DEI became a political issue.

“The politics are what the politics are, but we’re here in the community serving our youth and our families every day,” said Mackenzi Stewart, director of tennis at the L.E.A.D. tennis program in Atlanta. “We can’t really afford to get caught up in the politics and what’s, popular to do and what’s not popular to do, because families, and specifically my girls in my program, they have needs that need to be met . . . It means everything to be able to receive this kind of support in this type of political climate, because I can’t stop my work because of somebody else up in DC or something else got going on.”

Stewart played tennis at Southern University and took advantage of a scholarship from the USTA to train and gain her coaching certification, key to impact hub’s goal of developing more coaches from under-represented populations. Stewart believes it’s essential members of the Lady Ambassadors, an all-girls tennis program, see tennis professionals who look like them.

“Coaches, they’re coaching you a lot of times through life and just helping you make your transition from being a child, a young adult and into an adult,” said Stewart. “We grow with our girls, so as long as they maintain good grades, attendance and behavior, both at school. . .We really become a part of their village.”

US Open Champion Sloane Stephens’ Foundation

The Sloane Stephens Foundation was among the ten programs selected. Established by the 2018 U.S. Open champion, the Sloane Stephens Foundation is based in Fort Lauderdale and serves communities throughout South Florida, as well as Compton, California. Funds received from the Community Hub Initiative will fund programs in South Florida.

“So there’s so many tennis courts in the South Florida area, and a lot of students and children just don’t have access to them,” said Sybil Smith, Stephen’s mom and co-founder of the Sloane Stephens Foundation.

The Foundation operates recess programs in which coaches go into public schools and parks to introduce more kids to the sport and provide free or affordable access to tennis events and facilities. The Foundation also offers after-school homework support, Literacy, STEM, and enrichment programs as well as high-school and college readiness.

In July, Stephens received the 2025 Muhammad Ali Sports Humanitarian Award at the ESPYs for the work she has done with her foundation.

“We’re just grateful to have the USTA foundation believe in what we do as a as an NJTL we’ve spent about 12 years now developing our programming across the country, really, and so to have them believe and have confidence in us to continue to grow the game at at a scaled level, is really exciting.,” said Smith. “I’m an educator of 35 years, so for me, I’m proud to be a part of it, because it fits right in with what I’ve done my entire career.”

Frances Tiafoe: The Promise Of The Pilot Program

Ahead of the U.S. Open, Tiafoe walked with his mother on Fifth Avenue in New York, where they stared up at gigantic images of the 27-year-old tennis player on the facade of a Lululemon store. The Manhattan stroll came after Tiafoe’s swanky culinary affair in which he hosted fans and influencers. Cocktails and marketing collaborations are part of Tiafoe’s duties as ambassador. His rise from janitor’s son to one of the highest-paid tennis players in the world represents the promise of the community hubs.

“We will expand as funds come available to expand into new communities. We certainly have unmet demand for this program that we think will multiply and accelerate impact in people participating in tennis,” said Ehrlich. “But we certainly want to kind of measure results, see how it goes, as well. As funds become available, expand the footprint.”

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without the support of everyone at JTCC,” Tiafoe said during an event in 2022 when he donated $50,000 to the JTCC. “It means a lot to me to be able to pay it forward and help the next generation of kids have access to the same opportunities as I did.”