Special from
Zoo Tennis
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As the USTA’s Director of Player ID and Development, Kent Kinnear serves as the liaison between the organization and all competitive 14-and-under tennis players in the country. That’s a daunting and wide-ranging responsibility, but the 51-year-old from Greenwood, Indiana has prepared for it with decades of experience on all levels of tennis.
USTA Director of Player ID and Development Kent Kinnear
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Zoo Tennis After his junior career in Indiana, Kinnear played for legendary Clemson coach Chuck Kriese while rooming with former USTA head of men’s tennis Jay Berger. An All-American for the Tigers in doubles in 1987, Kinnear went on to play 11 years on the ATP tour, reaching a career-high ranking of 24 in doubles and 163 in singles.
After retiring in 1999, Kinnear worked for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes for two years, then began to gravitate toward coaching at the grassroots level. Through his friendship with former ATP pro David Wheaton, Kinnear learned of an opening with the men’s team at the University of Illinois, and he served as an assistant coach there for two years before joining the USTA as a National Coach in 2007. In 2011, Kinnear took over his current position when Martin Blackman, then the head of USTA Talent Identification, resigned to start his own academy. Blackman has since re-joined the USTA, returning in 2015 as General Manager of Player Development, replacing Patrick McEnroe.
Last month at the Junior Orange Bowl, I spoke with Kinnear about how Player ID and Development structures its interactions with young competitive players, their parents and their coaches.
Colette Lewis: Where do you start in organizing a development pathway?
Kent Kinnear: We've put together a curriculum to give to coaches who lead Early Development Camps in all 17 sections. If you add up all the camps, there will be about 170 of them [in 2017]. Every one of these Early Development Camps has pretty clear objectives. There's a parent presentation, there's athletic development skills that are shared. This has been in place two or three years now, and it's the third year we've done 160 or 170 of these around the country. This is at the base, it's 7- to 10-year-olds, so there are a couple of thousands of kids going through this. It's really just to start building relationships and getting good information out.
