‘Agent of Change’: Craig Tiley Brings Track Record of Innovation as USTA CEO
By Rob Schaefer
Craig Tiley approached his first week as CEO of the U.S. Tennis Association with the necessary urgency for the top tennis job in the world’s largest, single-country tennis market.
By 7 a.m. on his first day — 72 hours after going-away festivities across the world with his former employer, Tennis Australia — Tiley was stationed in Orlando, where the USTA has its national campus, dialing USTA section heads for relationship-building introductions.
The next day, he flew to New York for three days of meetings with USTA senior leadership. By Friday, he had jetted to Texas for the USTA Texas section’s annual meeting. Saturday morning, he called in to an Intercollegiate Tennis Association board meeting to introduce himself.
“That first six days gives you a sense of what’s important to him,” said Craig Morris, CEO of USTA Coaching and a direct report of Tiley’s for 10 years at Tennis Australia. “Connection and making sure that people feel that they’re the most important person across the board. That’s a real gift that he has.”
They also give a sense of Tiley’s work ethic — he is known to those who have worked with him as a light sleeper and all-hours emailer — and how big a job he now faces.
As CEO of the USTA, Tiley will be responsible for overseeing the cultivation of grassroots tennis in the U.S.; leading the already revenue-rich U.S. Open to new commercial heights; and managing stakeholder relationships across the fragmented landscape of global tennis, from the USTA’s 17 sections to the other Grand Slams and pro tours, to athletes, coaches and agents.
“It’s not going to be dull,” said Octagon founder and President Phil de Picciotto. “[Tiley is] not going to be a shrinking wallflower. He’ll be out there, and he knows everybody in tennis from his prior position. He’s uniquely qualified.”
A native South African, Tiley broke out as coach of the University of Illinois men’s tennis team from 1994 to 2005, when he led the program from obscurity to prosperity, including an undefeated season and NCAA championship in 2003. He joined Tennis Australia as director of tennis in 2005, became tournament director of the Australian Open in 2006 and added CEO of the governing body to the latter title in 2013.
His next opportunity has him presiding over a region with more than 10 times the total population of Australia and double the number of member associations within its tennis governing body. But Tiley’s experience made him a strong candidate for the USTA CEO position when his predecessor, Lew Sherr, left for the New York Mets in July 2025.
“Every time we had the opportunity at the CEO level, he [Tiley] was my first call,” said USTA Chairman and President Brian Vahaly, whom Tiley ironically failed to recruit to Illinois as a player. “He’s such a compelling candidate because of what we think he can do for our organization, and he can hit the ground running from Day 1 and make [an] impact.”
Listening Tour
Tiley was appointed the USTA’s next CEO in late February but did not officially start until late July, as he helped Tennis Australia place his successor, former National Rugby League CEO Andrew Abdo.
One month into the USTA job, Tiley said he had focused his attention on a listening tour, taking nearly 40 one-on-one meetings with staff to get a sense of the challenges they face and opportunities they see.
“The question I’ve asked everyone is, ‘If you were to have a magic wand, what would be different for you?’” he said. “I want to see how people think and how creative they are. The first goal was building relationships.”
This, along with a deep love of tennis, is a hallmark of Tiley’s leadership style, according to Morris. “He engages you as an individual, not as an employee,” Morris said. “As that [connection] gets deeper, there’s just an energy that he creates that people want to work for him. That’s his superpower.”
That quality was foundational to Tiley’s success as a coach, too.
“He took as many hours in the day as necessary to make somebody feel like they were really valued,” said Rajeev Ram, who played for Illinois during the undefeated 2003 season and later became a standout doubles player on the ATP Tour. “One of the big reasons our team had so much success — players improved, no question — but [Tiley] got us to come together as a group and become, instead of just great individuals, a great team.”
The fruits of Tiley’s early conversations with USTA staff will take time to manifest and be closely watched. Tiley is commonly referred to as an “agent of change,” both by his peers and himself. He coined a mantra during his time leading the Australian Open — Each year, 50% of the event must be different than the previous year — that underscored innovations from the annual AO Live music and entertainment festival to the “1 Point Slam” exhibition.
“[He and the team] tried to borrow from the best of the likes of Disneyland, where you’ve got different worlds and different experiences within the event,” said Machar Reid, Tennis Australia director of innovation, noting elements at the tournament grounds over the years, including go-karts, water slides, gaming activations and fine dining. “That lifelong journey as a fan and connecting with the sport and the event in different ways is something Craig and the events team held dear.”
This was also foreshadowed by Tiley’s time in Urbana-Champaign, where Ram recalled the university marching band playing during matches, and teammate Evan Zeder said players routinely posted flyers promoting the team at fraternity houses and local restaurants to draw fans — all at Tiley’s behest.
“He [Tiley] would sit down with the team and say, ‘I know you guys think you’re great, but you’re still the tennis team. You’re not just going to get fans out to get fans out,’” said Zeder, who is now senior global director of sports marketing at New Balance, an Australian Open sponsor. “No one had an atmosphere like us.”
At both stops, Tiley’s philosophies proved successful. During his time Down Under, the Australian Open grew into a multipurpose powerhouse that in 2025 anchored Tennis Australia’s nearly $500 million in revenue, and in 2026 drew a record of more than 1.3 million fans.
Tiley clearly has big ideas for the USTA and U.S. Open. A long-standing pipe dream of his: A mile-long, translucent dome encasing a tennis tournament as a means of climate control. But he is taking a deliberate approach. He said some plans will be shared in announcements soon, but other “transformational” ideas will need stress-testing after the 2026 U.S. Open.
“We have a very strong foundation,” Tiley said. “But that, I’m excited about, because you can really accelerate on a stronger foundation, [rather than] having too many things to fix before you can accelerate.”
Building Relationships
Tiley said relationship building with USTA section staff is among his top priorities in the early going. The USTA has set an ambitious goal of fostering 35 million active tennis players in the U.S. by 2035 — data shared by the organization in February reported 27.3 million in 2025, up 54% since 2019 — and these bodies are responsible for actioning that effort at the grassroots level.
But other worlds within U.S. tennis — which Tiley seeks to “completely align” — warrant attention as well.
The U.S. hosts 11 ATP and/or WTA events across the 250, 500 and 1000 levels, a significant but declining number as tour event sanctions have been consolidated or relocated in recent years. Multiple U.S. tournament operators polled by Sports Business Journal acknowledged that the USTA’s support of these types of events has waned, but expressed hope that Tiley may reverse the trend, particularly given Tennis Australia’s history of operating pro events in the run-up to the Australian Open.
“I want those [U.S.] events to feel a part of the family,” Tiley said. “We’ve got to play a service role to those events. We’ve got to help those events; whatever we can do to make those events better. I have been public about this without going specifically through a strategy on it, but I would like to see more major events in the U.S. I would like to see events every single week, so American players can stay basically at home and go from coast to coast, city to city, and play and become a top-100 player.”
Tiley additionally expressed a desire to “lean into” college tennis — not in a controlling capacity, but in providing “the right support to ensure [it] grows and we don’t lose programs, and it provides opportunities for American players.”
Meanwhile, in the pro realm, the USTA is fighting battles on the athlete front, whether it be the group of top players led by former WTA CEO Larry Scott lobbying for higher pay at the Grand Slams, or the antitrust lawsuit filed by the PTPA last year that names the USTA as a defendant. (Under Tiley’s leadership, Tennis Australia settled out of that lawsuit late last year in a decision he has described as situation-specific.)
Tiley also continues to advocate for some form of a “premier tour” for pro tennis, wherein the calendar is tiered between higher- and lower-level events and streamlined to accommodate an offseason, among other reforms. While there isn’t known traction toward the implementation of such a model, Tiley’s megaphone to advocate for change will be even more pronounced atop the USTA.
How will these commitments manifest? Where will investment backed by the U.S. Open’s soaring revenue — $560 million as of last accounting, 90% of the USTA’s total $624 million — flow?
It’s not going to be dull.
But Tiley is motivated by big challenges. He recalled a conversation with a rival Big Ten coach early in his Illinois tenure, during which the coach told him something to the effect of:
“I don’t know why they hired you. You don’t have any experience in this game — and Illinois, that’s in the middle of the cornfields. Nothing’s ever going to happen there.”
“I was motivated by being told it’s not possible in that instance,” Tiley said. “At [Tennis] Australia, there was a little bit of an upstart mentality, and I was motivated by people saying things cannot get done.
“Coming into the USTA, there’s so much opportunity. What’s the opportunity that can give us the biggest impact? I’m challenged by figuring that out.”