The First Time Tennis Has Shown Me New Foundation

I picked up a racquet in the 1960s. Started watching matches on PBS in the early 70s when broadcast tennis felt like educational programming with a baseline attached. Fifty-plus years later, most "innovations" in tennis have been surface work. Better strings. Faster courts. Hawk-Eye. Apps that help you find hitting partners. All improvements. None structural.

Then I spent an hour on the phone with Charles Allen. He runs something called INTENNSE. I haven't witnessed an event yet, but I will. Because for the first time in my career, someone showed me tennis built on different architecture.

Why Most Tennis Innovation Isn't

The industry keeps solving the wrong problems. Shorter formats for exhibition matches. Better camera angles for broadcasts. New apps to track stats. Tournament scheduling software that almost works. These fix symptoms. They don't address the ecosystem that creates the symptoms.

Charles talked about broken data pipelines in junior tennis. Governing bodies running tournaments on spreadsheets. Economics that force players outside the top 100 into survival mode. Toxicity that persists because nobody changes the environment that shapes behavior. He wasn't pitching me a product. He was describing structural failures I've watched for decades.

What INTENNSE Actually Changes

Three ten-minute Bolts. Not sets. Bolts. Fourteen seconds between points. One serve. Live substitutions. Coaching during play. Fans at court level. Zero dead time. Traditional tennis runs about 20 percent active play. INTENNSE pushes 80 percent. It's the speed chess of tennis—same court, same ball, but the clock changes everything.

But the format isn't the point. The point is what the format does. It changes the relationship between players and crowd. Between teammates and individuals. Between families and financial investment. Between broadcast production and fan engagement.

Charles kept circling back to environment. Not strokes. Not equipment. Not marketing. Environment. The space players stand inside determines everything else. Change the space, change the outcomes. That's systems thinking. That's infrastructure design. That's the kind of work that matters.

Why This Connects to Larger Work

I've spent 35 years building systematic approaches to player development. Court 4 wasn't about better instruction—it was about creating the right developmental environment. The Player Development Plan isn't about tracking stats—it's about building infrastructure that connects what families invest to what players need. Same principle Charles is working with. Different application.

He launched the first season in Atlanta this past June. Three teams. The INTENNSE Arena at Electric Owl Studios in Decatur. Secured $4 million in backing. Got broadcast distribution through Peachtree Sports Network covering all of Georgia. Ran the season through August. Team Atlanta won the inaugural championship.

More important: they proved the format works. College players responded. Fans engaged. The 14-second shot clock and single serve created the intensity Charles predicted. Players could substitute when momentum shifted or energy dropped. The economics changed too. Players earned up to $70,000 over two months. Compare that to grinding through Futures tournaments hoping to crack the top 200.

What I'm Looking Forward To

Charles is running the first college draft in tennis history—March 13, 2026. He's treating 2025 as Season 0, proof of concept before the full launch. Plans to double the number of teams. Expanding to new markets. I haven't stood in the INTENNSE Arena yet. Haven't felt what 80 percent active time does to the energy in the room. Haven't watched substitutions happen in real time or seen how fans respond when the court lights flash red on an out ball.

But I know enough to pay attention. Tennis has spent 50 years trying to modernize around the edges. INTENNSE is modernizing the center. The architecture. The logic. The system itself.

After six decades in this game, I don't often see genuinely new approaches to competitive structure. When I do, I show up to understand what's actually happening. I'll be there soon to see for myself. Not because it's different. Because it's different in ways that matter.

Want to learn more about INTENNSE? Visit Intennse.com or follow their season coverage on Peachtree Sports Network.