The USTA is bringing tennis coaches from across the country to Midtown Manhattan this month for a brand-new conference headlined by Billie Jean King, a 39-time Grand Slam champion, and South Carolina women's basketball coach Dawn Staley. The inaugural Coaches Open runs August 25-27 at the Hilton Midtown on 6th Avenue, timed to overlap with the start of US Open Fan Week just as the tournament gears up in Queens.
The three-day gathering, which USTA has described as a celebration of coaches, is open exclusively to registered members of the USTA Coaching community, according to amNewYork. Interested coaches can register through USTA Coaching's website. The event also happens to land on the one-year anniversary of USTA Coaching's founding, a marker that gives the gathering added significance for an organization trying to professionalize an industry that, until last year, had no centralized national body at all.
USTA Coaching CEO Craig Morris called the timing intentional, saying that holding the event in New York as the US Open gets underway was the right moment to bring coaches together. Morris, who has led USTA Coaching since its foundation, also described the conference as one of the most important USTA investments in coaching in years. Megan Rose, managing director and head of business development and operations at USTA Coaching, said the event was planned to meet coaches where they are.
Star Power on the Speaker List
Beyond King and Staley, the roster includes John Wroblewski, head coach of the U.S. women's national hockey team who won a 2026 Olympic gold medal, and goaltender Aerin Frankel, who also won gold with that team this year. Staley herself is a three-time Olympic gold medalist, a five-time WNBA All-Star, and has led South Carolina's women's basketball program to three NCAA national championships. Former Eleven Madison Park co-owner Will Guidara, who wrote Unreasonable Hospitality, rounds out the non-tennis speakers brought in to talk leadership and culture.
On the tennis side, Paul Annacone — who formerly coached Roger Federer and Pete Sampras and currently coaches Taylor Fritz — will lead hands-on coaching and on-court training sessions at Louis Armstrong Stadium alongside other professional coaches. Nicole LaVoi, a senior lecturer at the University of Minnesota who directs the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, will host a session focused on empowering girls in sport. The USTA will also run sessions on inclusive coaching practices and wheelchair tennis.
Technology Takes Center Court
Programming will cover performance analytics, AI-driven coaching, and the USTA Coaching app, arriving just a day after Agassi Sports Entertainment and USTA Coaching announced a multi-year commercial agreement to weave USTA Coaching curricula into an AI-powered instruction platform built with IBM. The deal, disclosed in an SEC filing, comes as Darren Cahill — who coaches five-time Grand Slam champion Jannik Sinner — prepares to speak at the conference as an ASE advisor.
The tech push builds on other moves USTA Coaching has made over the past year. In April, the organization named smart-ring maker Oura its official wearable technology partner, folding biometric tracking into coaching resources and performance monitoring. In November 2025, USTA Coaching also launched a digital Online Learning Hub offering modular certification badges, letting coaches complete coursework remotely before ever setting foot in a room like the one at the Hilton Midtown.
A Response to Safety Concerns and a Coaching Shortage
USTA Coaching itself is barely a year old. When the USTA launched the dedicated arm in August 2025, it established the sport's first-ever nationwide coaching framework, making Safe Play approval and criminal background screenings mandatory following an independent review of player safety, according to theScore. At the time, the USTA estimated that only 25,000 to 30,000 tennis coaches were operating nationwide, and it set a goal of expanding that number to between 75,000 and 100,000 certified coaches.
That expansion push comes as demand for court time and instruction keeps climbing. The USTA's 2026 U.S. Tennis Participation Report found that nationwide participation hit a record 27.3 million players in 2025, marking six straight years of growth and a 54% jump since 2019. Core players — those hitting the courts 10 or more times a year — grew by 1.5 million to reach 14.5 million, now representing 53% of all U.S. tennis players and generating more than 616 million play occasions, per the report.
Much of that growth is coming from groups the sport has historically underserved. Female participation grew 10% in 2025, adding 1.1 million players, while Black/African American participation rose 14% and Hispanic/Latino participation climbed 12%, according to USTA data. The federation has set a formal goal of reaching 35 million active players nationwide by 2035, an internal target sometimes referred to as the 35 by 35 initiative.
Beyond the Conference Room
USTA CEO Craig Tiley oversees the broader organization, which will begin its main draw at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on August 30. Beyond its coaching push, the USTA has been navigating other high-stakes matters at its Queens home, including a $400 million push for an Arthur Ashe facelift and a separate legal dispute with the Hester family over court space at the National Tennis Center.
For coaches attending the Coaches Open, the USTA has arranged free on-site childcare throughout the event, along with a trade show and an innovation showcase where new coaching technologies will be on display. The USTA has said the conference aims to help coaches grow their craft and expand their networks, positioning the gathering as the on-the-ground extension of a coaching build-out that started in an office a year ago and now spills into a Midtown ballroom during the sport's biggest week in New York.
