What goes up, like a tennis ball, must come down, right? Well, that hasn’t really applied to tennis participation, though. At least, not yet since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the sixth consecutive year, the number of tennis player in the U.S. has grown, according to the recently-released 2026 U.S. Tennis Participation Report, sort of like Carlos Alcaraz’s hair each day of the 2025 U.S. Open after he had shaved his head. Last year, 2025, U.S. tennis participation bounced up further by 1.6 million players to 27.3 million Americans. That’s around a six percent increase if you don’t have an abacus or enough fingers handy to count and calculate.
Patrick McEnroe, former professional tennis player and captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team and current tennis broadcaster and co-director of the John McEnroe Tennis Academy, called this “a boom for tennis the last five years.” He told me about how the JMTA courts on Randall’s Island in New York City “went from 20 to 29 courts and from four to eight every day, every court is packed with four to five kids per courts. So, not only are adults playing, but we’ve been able to attract a lot more kids and keep them in it.”
Since 2019 U.S. Tennis Participation Has Grown By 54 Percent
Yeah, tennis has been making quite a racket throughout the 2020s. It began with nature sort of dropping a deuce on everyone and the U.S. being ill-prepared to handle it. In March 2020 when the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 was spreading in an uncontrolled fashion, the U.S. had to scramble to flatten the curve—remember that?—and buy time to figure out what to do. With no clear strategy from the U.S. government, the default was to have lots of things just shut down kind of indefinitely at the time.
I wrote about all that in Forbes in 2020 and how with no real guidance on how Americans could stay physical active and socializing, tennis served up an opportunity to do both while maintaining enough distance from each other to prevent virus transmission. “I think we all know why in the pandemic [tennis participation grew], because there wasn’t a lot that people could do sporting-wise and activity wise,” McEnroe recalled. “Tennis was one of the sports that people could play.” That year saw a 22 percent increase in tennis participation as I covered in Forbes.
But even as society bounced back from 2020, tennis participation did not. No it kept bouncing forward. And I kept writing about this remarkable spin on things, in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. That’s because this has been one of the continuing feel-good stories from the COVID-19 pandemic. The result has been tennis participation growing by a whopping 54 percent since 2019. Those six consecutive years of growth have added nearly 10 million players in this country.
4.9 Million Picked Up Tennis Racquets For The First Time In 2025
The report was based on responses to the Physical Activity Council Study on Sports and Physical Activity and the PLAY Study, formerly known as the Participation and Engagement Study. These two studies consist of surveying each year a total of around 36,000 people in the U.S. Survey responses also showed that 4.9 million picked up tennis racquets for the first time in 2025. This was nine percent more racquet newbies than there were in 2024.
Oh, and the surveys showed that what happened on the court tended to stay on the court as well. Most tennis players have kept on dropshotting rather than dropping out of the sport. Around 20.7 million players stayed with the sport. That’s a 10 percent increase from 2024. There also seemed to be many happy returns with 1.7 million players coming back to the sport after having been away for more than a year.
Then there are the tennis curious. An estimated 25 million Americans who currently don’t play tennis do have a lot interest in playing. They may not have the balls or the racquets or whatever to do so right now. But they could someday add to the total.
More Tennis Participation Could Mean More Health Benefits For More People
What happened in 2025 means that the U.S. Tennis Association is in good position to reach its goal of 35 million players by 2035. Brian Vahaly, Chairman of the Board and Interim Co-CEO, USTA, had talked to me previously about this goal. He had also used the moniker “world’s healthiest sport” when describing tennis.
Now whenever you use the descriptor world’s top anything—with the possible exception of world’s best food, which is sushi— you may get a debate. Nevertheless, there’s no denying that tennis can bring a variety of health benefits and can be played by people of nearly all ages.
“I can’t tell you how many people I see that come out, you know, in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, and they’re still playing tennis,” McEnroe related. “I’m playing actually with a woman next Monday whom I know from the theater, and she’s been playing and she’s going to turn 97. Every year the past five years on her birthday, I go into the city and I play with her and her coach and her friend at her club.”
The body and mind benefits of tennis make the tennis boom truly a feel-good story, no strings attached. McEnroe emphasized, “You have to pretty much use every part of your body and your brain because of all those factors, tracking the ball, seeing the ball, connecting with the ball, timing, awareness and obviously, movement.”
Tennis Participation Continues To Grow More And More Diverse
Now, one historical image of tennis in this country that the USTA has been trying to dispel is that tennis is somehow a sport for “the elites.” I’ve already written about some of the USTA’s programs to bring greater diversity into the sport. But there have been other efforts too such as what the JMTA been doing. “Our charitable wing that’s part of the Academy has basically raised money for scholarships to take tennis into the local schools in the South Bronx and in Harlem that are close to Randalls Island,” McEnroe explained. “Some of those kids end up in our regular Johnny Mac Tennis Academy.” He added, “When I look at the background of the kids in our program, I would say it’s a pretty wide range of kids now. There are African-American kids, Asian kids and Eastern European kids that get into tennis. We’re in New York City, so we’re trying to bring in as diverse a background of kids as we can. But always you can always do more.”
The survey results suggest that programs around the country are working to increase diversity in participation. Last year saw increases in the number of Black/African Americans playing tennis by over 450,000 (14 percent), Hispanic/Latino players by over 550,000 (12 percent) and Asian/Pacific Islander players by over 260,000 (10 percent). As you may have noticed, these numbers are greater percentage increases than the overall player increase. And the sport courted 1.1 million more women in 2025 than in 2024. That’s a 10 percent increase from 2024.
It’s now clear that tennis participation is on the up and up. And more people from different backgrounds are having a ball.
