Chuck Gill, the director of the Wellington Tennis Center, has added another responsibility to his list of day-to-day duties. He is now the president of United States Tennis Association’s Florida Section.
That appointment became official in early December at the 2024 USTA Florida annual meeting in Tallahassee. This volunteer role will enable him to assist in growing the sport of tennis throughout the State of Florida. During his two-year term with USTA Florida, he will remain the director of tennis in Wellington.
In many respects, Gill is the ideal person for this role, since he has been involved in promoting, organizing and teaching tennis his entire adult life.
“Much of my life has been dedicated to growing the sport of tennis,” said Gill, who grew up in Richmond, Virginia, where he started stringing racquets at 16 and assisting with teaching junior tennis lessons.
As Gill looks at the state of tennis in Florida, there’s room for improvement in many areas, such as the quality and quantity of public courts, coaches and entry-level programs.
“We need more and better tennis courts,” Gill said. “Many public facilities in our state were built during the ‘tennis boom’ of the 1980s and 1990s and are now in need of upgrades and improvements. My hope is that USTA Florida can advocate for these improvements and help to connect tennis centers to the places that can help them improve the places to play. The USTA and many state entities have grants and funding to assist with both facility design and capital improvements. We need to connect these with the places that need them.”
There’s also a need for more coaches who instruct both elite players and beginner-level tennis enthusiasts.
“We need more and better trained coaches. We need more entry level ‘beginner friendly’ programs for everyone from juniors to seniors,” Gill said. “We all know about the health benefits of tennis, as well as the fun and social aspects, but learning tennis without an easy pathway to being able to actually play remains a challenge. So much of our coaching education is centered around high-level competition, but in order to grow the sport, we need more coaches who can provide entry level tennis to adults and juniors.”
Gill said that these goals are worth pursuing because of the benefits of playing tennis.
“Tennis is a great sport for fun, physical and mental fitness and competitive play,” he noted.
According to Gill, USTA Florida’s focus is as much on recruiting new players as it is trying to get existing players to play more tennis.
“We must reach out to underserved populations to introduce them to tennis and to make it lower cost,” Gill explained. “Also, we need to find ways to move the ‘once-a-month’ player to ‘once-a-week,’ which means offering new and different ways to play tennis.”
The USTA Florida Section is a not-for-profit organization and is headquartered in Lake Nona, adjacent to the USTA’s 100-plus-court national campus.
