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A new generation is picking up tennis in Detroit. by Jena Brooker September 18, 2026 3:33 pm Tennis is having a moment in Detroit. The signs are showing up in different places: new tournaments and leagues, new courts, the return of professional tennis to the area, and a waitlist for the city's youth lessons. Nationally, tennis participation reached a new high last year, with an estimated 27.3 million people playing across the country, according to the US Tennis Association. And it's specifically growing in popularity with people of color. Nick Barnes, co-founder of the Seminole Tennis Club, an amateur club that plays at Palmer Park to provide an accessible, free space for people to play tennis and socialize, said he thinks it's due to growing representation on social media and in professional tennis. "Tennis has always been seen as a wealthier sport that a lot of people think of being played at country clubs," he said. Each Wednesday, the Seminole Tennis Club brings together about 30 people and has extra rackets and balls for players. Barnes said he's seen an increase in interest in tennis in the last two years "I think due to it becoming more popular on social media and even players like Coco Gauff and just more Black players getting into it," said Barnes. Since 2020, tennis has grown in popularity the most with Black and Hispanic players, according to the United States Tennis Association's annual report, exceeding general population growth rates. Between 2020 and 2025, the number of Black tennis players increased by 75%, Hispanic players 88%, and Asian players 46%, according to the USTA. The number of white players grew by just 1.38% in the same time period. Chase Root, executive director of the United States Tennis Association (USTA) Southeastern Michigan, said youth and adult programming in the area "continues to expand." The regional association has 10,402 individual members, according to Root. "We've seen some growth and new opportunities in and around Detroit," said Root, with higher numbers of people participating in tournaments and leagues compared to 2024. In early September, Palmer Park launched the inaugural Detroit City Championship, with 93 registrations. Nearby, Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills brought pro tennis back to the area for the first time in three decades with the Tennis Classic in 2023. Since then, the tournament has moved up to the second-highest level of men's professional tennis, with $230,000 in prize money. The growth isn't limited to traditional tournaments. This summer, USTA launched a new league Downriver, where players are matched with others at their skill level and schedule matches at their convenience. In mid-September, Roar Brewing in Midtown Detroit launched a six-week "red ball tennis" league, a type of tennis made to get everyone on the court with a smaller court and racket and a slower ball. The popularity in Detroit resulted in a waitlist for the city's recreation department. City courts, free lessons. Starting in the late 1940s, tennis became a hit in Hamtramck, with star player Jean Hoxie and her husband Jerry establishing the first tennis camp in the US in Veterans Memorial Park in Hamtramck. Together they developed 16 state titleholders in singles tennis and 13 state titleholders in double tennis. Over the decades, the enclave community turned out local champions and professional players like Fred Kovaleski, Chuck Brainard and Jane "Peaches" Bartkowicz. Detroit also has its own tennis hero: Bob Ryland, the first Black tennis professional in the country, played at Wayne State University. Since then, the sport's popularity waxed and waned. Michael Banks, owner of Professional Racquet Services on Livernois, has been supplying Detroiters with equipment for all sorts of racquet sports for more than 40 years. Banks said tennis took a hit during COVID but is back on the rise. "We used to have a tournament almost every week during the summertime, but because of COVID, everything died down," he said. While the trendy new thing is really pickleball, tennis is "getting back up again," said Banks. "Next summer it's going to build up even more." Some of that renewed interest is showing up in demand for public tennis programs and courts. Megan Woods, communications manager at the City of Detroit General Services Department, said there was a waitlist for their tennis program for ages 5-16, even after expanding the group size due to the demand, "an increase from previous years." In recent park improvement projects, Woods said that "residents have voiced that they wanted tennis courts improved." As a result, most recently, the city added tennis courts this summer to Peterson Park in the Winship neighborhood near Outer Drive and Greenfield. In 2024, Palmer Park got lights added, funded by the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation because those "courts are our most used tennis courts and heavily programmed," according to Woods. And over the summer, as it has for several years in a row, Rouge Park in partnership with Flat Out Tennis offered free tennis lessons on Fridays. But public courts and free programs are also part of a bigger question about who gets to play tennis. In Hamtramck, coaches at Hamtramck High School are expanding tennis options to a new generation of players who are primarily Bengali. After 20 years without a boys tennis program, Joey Patterson and another coach brought tennis back to the school in 2024. At first, there were four boys at practice, Patterson said. This year, there are 25 boys in the program. The coaches also offer free tennis programs for kids during the summer. In recent years, they have advocated for tennis in the community, including pushing the city council to approve $113,343 last year to renovate the tennis courts at Veterans Park. Patterson said it's good to change the narrative about what a tennis player is and looks like. "Tennis is for everyone," Patterson said. The coaches are also trying to reconnect Hamtramck's current players with the city's tennis history. On Sept. 19, they will host a free lecture at the Hamtramck Historical Museum featuring "tennis legends" Jane "Peaches" Bartkowicz and Chuck Brainard. "I don't think everybody really knows the great history of Hamtramck tennis," Patterson said. "I'm trying to build the program back up to what it was." It's a long way from the state championship program Hamtramck once had, Patterson said. But for a new generation of players, the goal is not only to bring tennis back - it's to make sure they know they belong on the court, too. Jena Brooker is BridgeDetroit's environmental reporter, covering food and agriculture, pollution and climate change. She has held three fellowships: a ProPublica fellowship, where she led an investigative... More by Jena Brooker

Luxe US Open is about to get $800M grander. A large-scale renovation, which will transform the grounds for both players and fans, could enlarge a class divide among attendees. Sep 11, 2026 | 12:42 pm Jerry Lai-Imagn Images NEW YORK - The biggest thing in tennis is getting a whole lot bigger. The U.S. Tennis Association is about midway through a three-year, $800 million renovation of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. The makeover will upgrade the setting of the US Open - already the sport's most lucrative tournament with a $108 million prize pool, and one of its most-attended events. Privately financed by the USTA and first unveiled last year, the facility upgrade plan includes: An extension and redesign of the courtside seating bowl at Arthur Ashe Stadium, the complex's centerpiece, to create 2,000 additional lower-level seats; a 40% enlargement of the stadium's promenade-level concourse; and the creation of two new luxury-suite levels, plus several new club, restaurant, and premium hospitality spaces. The project will also add a state-of-the-art, $250 million player-performance center - a sizable upgrade in amenities for competing athletes. As this year's US Open heads toward yet another attendance record, surpassing last year's 1.14 million, and continues to show the stress of its ever-expanding popularity, the grounds have something of a transitory feel. Some areas, like the enlarged seating bowl at Arthur Ashe Stadium, are essentially done, and the entire lower level also has all new seats. Many components of the renovation work however, are not yet complete, and have had temporary finishes for this year's US Open. Hospitality areas are much more limited than before, and scant compared to what's planned for 2027 and beyond. Another sprint of construction is set to begin later this month, and will extend through the winter and into next year, in part taking advantage of the Arthur Ashe Stadium roof. Once the entire project is complete in time for the 2027 US Open, though, the stadium will be brought fully into the 21st century after its initial development 29 years ago. "Ultimately, when people come out to the Open next year, it should feel like a brand-new building," USTA COO Danny Zausner tells Front Office Sports. "The shell, from the outside, will be what people know it as, but otherwise, we're talking about a transformed stadium." Fancy schmancy. Perhaps the most striking thing about the entire renovation project is the further separation of luxury-level customers from the rest of the US Open fans, who are the foremost driver of the tournament's annual attendance records. The reworking of the Arthur Ashe Stadium seating bowl doesn't materially enlarge the overall capacity of the facility, which would increase fan access and potentially lower average ticket prices. Rather, the project essentially shifts some of the upper-level seating closer to the court, which allows for greater intimacy, but also carries higher costs for fans. A sizable portion of the rest of the fan-facing renovation work, meanwhile, involves upgraded hospitality and experiential options for high-end customers, including several bunker lounges that will feature access to chef's tables, multicourse meals, and speakeasy bars. Those ultra-luxury areas are designed to compete more directly with similar offerings at many other modern stadiums and arenas, including in New York, that push far beyond the traditional trappings of an ordinary suite. New York magazine recently took sharp aim at the USTA on this class-divide front, complaining of what it called a "shmancification" of the tournament into merely a playground for rich elites to see and be seen, regardless of their interest in tennis: "In remaking Ashe, the USTA is doing the same thing as every branch of the hospitality industry by catering to those for whom money is no object with the most luxurious, most exclusive, most over-the-top experiences imaginable." Zausner, however, pushes back on the notion that regular fans are getting pushed or priced out of the tournament. Instead, he argues that the renovation will upgrade the overall event experience for every attendee. He also points to a 20% reduction in upper-level seating that's combined with a 40% increase in open space along the stadium's promenade tier, a combination specifically designed to relieve some of the bottlenecks that have become endemic to the US Open. "We're continuing to try to offer something for everybody, regardless of whether they have a grounds pass, are sitting in the front row, or anything in between," Zausner tells FOS. "What the experience upstairs [at the stadium beginning next year] is going to be like is going to be as premium as the premium-level spaces at plenty of other arenas and stadiums in this country. Everybody is stepping up a notch and going forward. Nobody's going back. "I appreciate that the 2,500 people in the club program are the sexy story that people are talking about, and the prices there, but that makes about 8% of the stadium capacity. The other 92% are also going to get a far superior experience than what they've had, and that's the big sell for us," he says. Cascade of changes. Located just to the west of Arthur Ashe Stadium and adjacent to the practice courts, the forthcoming player-performance space will create an extensive facility reshuffle. Current player locker rooms will become administrative spaces. The current offices will be used for part of the bunker suite plan. Player lounges and dining areas, meanwhile, will be repurposed for other hospitality spaces. "It is going to be quite complicated," Zausner says. "We're in a media center right now, for example, that's going to become a restaurant. Every space here [on the ground level of Arthur Ashe Stadium] is going to become something else. While this past year was complicated from a structural standpoint, what's happening now, the finishes that are being put in, is no less complicated." In the meantime, Sunday's men's singles final will conclude a tournament that will raise expectations for next year's event in the remade complex. "Fan Week this year was wildly successful, really beyond anyone's expectations," Zausner said of the tournament qualifying period that also now includes a high-profile mixed-doubles competition. "You combine that with sold-out days throughout the main draw, and it will be another strong performance. We feel like we're in a really good place."