The Founders’ Room Begins Thursday

This Thursday, I’ll begin publishing a 10-part essay series called The Founders’ Room.

The series is an attempt to name and examine something I’ve been circling for most of my career: the missing institutional layer in junior tennis where understanding actually forms. Not instruction. Not training. Not analytics. The space where judgment develops.

The first four essays are diagnostic. They’re meant to help readers see a gap that’s been hiding in plain sight, understand why it has persisted for nearly two centuries, and recognize why it’s now solvable.

As I’ve been finishing the series, something else has become clear. This work wants dialogue.

Not commentary. Not interviews. Not advice. But disciplined conversation that slows thinking down long enough for real understanding to emerge. I’m exploring the idea of a co-hosted video podcast that would live alongside the essays, not promote them. Same questions. Different medium.

I’m under no illusion about what this will cost. This series will almost certainly narrow my readership. It asks more than casual consumption. It resists certainty. It refuses to rush toward answers. Some people will decide this isn’t for them, and that’s not a failure of the work. It’s part of its discipline.

At this stage of my life, I’m comfortable with that tradeoff. I’m less interested in reach than in usefulness. Less concerned with being widely read than with being genuinely helpful to the people who recognize what’s being named here.

If you read essays as conclusions, this probably won’t land.
If you read them as working inquiries, you’ll recognize what I’m trying to build.

The series begins Thursday. The rest will reveal itself as it should.