The Spark Tennis Has Been Missing

Why INTENNSE Might Actually Reach New Audiences

Tennis and I go back to the 1960s. Learned the sport when tennis carried itself like dinner at the country club. Controlled. Restrained. All-white attire. Appropriate.

By 1997 Pete Sampras owned the number one ranking and his Air Sampras jump smash stood as the sport's most expressive move. Meanwhile Dee Brown had already lit up the country with his no-look dunk six years earlier. The gap was obvious. Basketball encouraged expression. Tennis contained it.

People don't fall in love with sports because of technical mastery. They fall in love because they see themselves in how the game feels. That's why I've been thinking about that gap a lot lately.

Around that time I coached a player named Kano Solomon. Kano wanted to expand what tennis allowed. We worked on 360 no-look Air Sampras overheads. Airborne Dr. J finishes. My thinking was simple. If he pulled off one of those moves in competition it would shift how people imagined the sport could feel. SportsCenter moment. Cultural spark. The kind of thing that brings in people who never considered watching tennis before.

That thinking eventually grew into something I called Get It Poppin. The name came from street basketball culture but the concept borrowed from the Harlem Globetrotters. They showed playground kids what basketball could become before the NBA established itself as entertainment. They gave the sport an emotional entry point. Rhythm. Joy. Identity worth imitating.

Tennis never had that moment. Still hasn't. The Air Sampras was it. One signature move in an entire era. Maybe that's why basketball culture spread the way it did and tennis stayed where it was.

Why Tennis Architecture Might Limit Expression

Years later I started thinking about this from a systems perspective. What if the traditional structure of tennis actively resists the thing that generates widespread excitement?

Long scoring arcs silence crowds. Even a brilliant twelve-shot rally is followed by thirty seconds of nothing. Extended recovery periods flatten emotional rhythm. The sport rewards perfect technique over dynamic identity. These aren't bugs. They're features of how tennis was designed. Maybe the architecture itself makes expressive play structurally difficult.

Which is why my conversation with Charles Allen felt different from every other tennis innovation attempt I've heard in sixty years. Charles runs INTENNSE. I haven't been inside the INTENNSE Arena yet but I recognize what he's built. It might be the first format designed for emotional electricity rather than technical perfection.

INTENNSE changes the environment players compete inside. Three ten-minute Bolts. Fourteen-second shot clock. One serve. Live substitutions. Team-based energy traditional tennis cannot match. The format operates at eighty percent active play compared to tennis's twenty percent. That's not incremental improvement. That's different architecture.

I keep wondering what that feels like to watch.

Where Expressive Athletes Might Actually Thrive

This matters because new audiences don't fall in love with technical perfection. They fall in love with expressive identity.

Every person I've introduced to tennis gravitates toward Gael Monfils and Nick Kyrgios instead of Roger Federer. They want players who move with improvisation and emotion. But tennis commentary often criticizes exactly what draws casual fans in. Expression gets coded as lack of discipline. Entertainment gets positioned as the opposite of winning.

What if INTENNSE is the first format that makes expressive athleticism structurally viable instead of penalizing it? What if the architecture itself eliminates that false choice?

And what happens when you think about pop-up competitions? Pop-ups succeed when they deliver immediate energy. Clear identities. Fast emotional hooks. Traditional tennis cannot do this. Too slow. Too stretched out. Too dependent on prior knowledge.

INTENNSE is the opposite. Compact. Dynamic. Accessible. Maybe anyone can understand a ten-minute Bolt even if they've never watched tennis. The crowd stands close. Energy moves fast. Highlights come naturally.

Which makes me wonder if INTENNSE is perfect for communities that have never been exposed to tennis. It might allow people who know nothing about the sport to feel something instantly. Create belonging without expertise. Build curiosity through motion rather than explanation. Families discovering it together. Kids who've never picked up a racquet seeing something that looks accessible instead of exclusive.

A kid watching a pop-up INTENNSE match might go home and try substitute-style rallies with friends. That's how culture spreads. Through imitation. Through identity.

Where My Mind Keeps Going

I'm building something called the Court 4 RV. Not a concept. Actually building it. Mobile performance lab carrying professional broadcast equipment worth roughly $250K. Pan-tilt-zoom cameras. Panasonic cinema-grade recording. 4K drone capability at 60 frames per second. Plus Founders' Room built in - the reflective space where players talk about what just happened before emotions fade.

My mind does what it always does when I see systematic infrastructure meeting format innovation. It starts drawing connections I can't turn off.

Here's what keeps running through my head. Traditional tennis broadcasting evolved for twenty percent active play. Long setup shots. Player recovery periods. Toweling off. Walking between points. The production rhythm matches the format. INTENNSE operates at eighty percent active play. That demands different camera work. Different editing pace. Different storytelling architecture entirely.

What if you could bring that production capacity to places that have never seen this format? Not asking them to travel to Atlanta. Bringing it to them.

The Globetrotters didn't wait for arena bookings. They showed up in communities. Created the event right there. Generated highlights. Built demand by proving what was possible before permanent infrastructure existed.

I keep imagining what pop-up INTENNSE events could look like. Court 4 RV arrives in a city. Partners with local tennis facility or high school. Sets up temporary court infrastructure with proper lighting and shot clock. Brings in college players from the region. Maybe local competitive talent. Founders' Room captures pre-event player interviews. The match happens. Full professional broadcast creates highlight reels and social content. Post-match reflection gets recorded.

Local community gets introduced to INTENNSE format without leaving town. Local players get exposure and compensation. Local facility gets proof their market has appetite for something different. Professional-quality content gets created that shows what happened.

Then the RV moves to the next city.

I'm not proposing anything to INTENNSE here. Haven't even discussed this with Charles. Just daydreaming out loud about what happens when mobile infrastructure meets format innovation. Because the structural opportunities are obvious. INTENNSE needs to prove market demand before building permanent venues in new cities. Court 4 RV needs proof-of-concept demonstrations that show what mobile broadcast infrastructure enables.

Pop-up events create both opportunities simultaneously.

Maybe that connection matters. Maybe it doesn't. But the economics shift when you can demonstrate market demand before capital commitment. Instead of building an INTENNSE Arena and hoping audiences show up, you run pop-up events that prove audiences exist. Then permanent venues become strategic expansion rather than speculative investment.

The Court 4 RV is getting built either way. That's happening. And the questions stay interesting to me.

Another Layer I Keep Thinking About

Here's something else that won't leave my mind. How often have you heard tennis commentators criticize players for entertaining instead of solely playing to win? Alcaraz hits a tweener at match point and analysts question his judgment. Kyrgios serves underhand when it's tactically sound and gets told he's disrespecting the game. Monfils goes for the spectacular and people say he's not serious about winning.

The cultural message is clear. Entertainment and winning exist in tension.

But what if INTENNSE's format eliminates that false choice? You can't survive three ten-minute Bolts at eighty percent active play without genuine competitive fire. But you also can't generate sustained crowd energy with technically perfect but emotionally flat tennis. The format structurally validates what traditional tennis commentary systematically devalues.

That opens another opportunity I keep thinking about. One that connects directly to why pop-up events could matter beyond just proving market demand.

What if Court 4 RV becomes coach development laboratory? Coaches sit inside Founders' Room during pop-up matches. Watching the same match the crowd sees. But from reflective space. Learning systematic observation in real competitive environment.

Player comes off court after ten-minute Bolt. Energy still high. Emotions still active. What questions do you ask to help them see what just happened? How do you frame questions that shift performance state for the next Bolt?

That's Socratic dialogue under time pressure. That's systematic observation translating into actionable development. Most coaches never learn this because nobody teaches infrastructure for asking better questions. They watch matches. They see what happens. But they don't develop frameworks for what questions create leverage when change is still accessible.

Founders' Room during live competition creates mobile laboratory for exactly this. Coaches learn what to observe. What questions shift states. How different players process the same match experience through different cognitive patterns. How to adapt communication style to match receiver processing patterns instead of forcing receivers to adapt to sender style.

That's communiplasticity training in controlled environment. Format provides consistent structure. Reflective space provides observation framework. Systematic questioning provides translation methodology.

Then those coaches return to their facilities with frameworks that actually work. They've watched those frameworks create results in real competitive environment. They've learned systematic observation that makes development possible instead of intuitive coaching that works brilliantly for some players and fails mysteriously for others.

What This Really Enables

So now Court 4 RV becomes multiple things simultaneously:

Mobile performance lab creating professional broadcast infrastructure. Community access point bringing format innovation directly to audiences. Coach development laboratory demonstrating systematic observation with live competitive examples. Market validation system proving demand exists before permanent investment. Knowledge capture mechanism creating systematic record of what works under what conditions.

Each function reinforces the others. Format innovation attracts coaches who want to learn. Coach development creates local expertise that sustains community engagement. Community engagement proves market demand. Market validation attracts investment. Investment enables permanent infrastructure.

The RV doesn't solve problems. It enables opportunities that current infrastructure can't access.

And this connects directly back to what I've been working on for 35 years. Alcott proved that individual observation plus Socratic dialogue produces superior educational outcomes. For 180 years that demonstration couldn't scale. Not because the methodology was wrong. Because the technology to amplify it didn't exist.

Court 4 RV with Founders' Room creates mobile laboratory where coaches learn observation and questioning skills systematically. The format provides test cases. The reflective space provides observation framework. The competitive pressure provides validation that frameworks actually work.

When you can bring production-quality capture to temporary competitive environments? When you can create emotional electricity in communities that have never seen themselves in tennis? When you make the invisible visible by taking the emotional logic of a sport directly to the public instead of requiring the public to travel to the sport? When you can teach coaches systematic observation and questioning in real competitive laboratory instead of abstract workshops?

That's infrastructure design creating access to what already wants to exist but hasn't found the right enabling environment.

What Actually Feels New

After six decades inside this game I rarely see ideas that feel genuinely different. INTENNSE feels different in ways I'm still working through.

Not because it's flashy. Because it creates the environment where expressive athletes become cultural sparks instead of outliers. The kind of environment Kano needed back in 1997. Because it proves tennis can generate emotional electricity when you change the architecture instead of just the marketing. Because it might eliminate the false choice between entertaining and winning that tennis commentary has reinforced for generations.

I want to stand inside the INTENNSE Arena. See what eighty percent active time does to room energy. Watch substitutions happen in real time. Feel how fans respond when the format gives them permission to connect immediately.

Tennis has tried for fifty years to modernize around the edges. Better strings. Faster courts. Shorter exhibition formats. INTENNSE is modernizing the center. The actual structure of competition.

And my mind keeps wondering what happens when you can take that structural innovation mobile. When you bring proof of concept to communities instead of asking communities to travel to proof of concept. When infrastructure enables format innovation in ways neither could accomplish alone. When coaches can learn systematic observation and questioning in real competitive laboratory instead of abstract theory. When the same mobile infrastructure that brings format innovation to new audiences also builds local coaching expertise that sustains community engagement after the RV moves to the next city.

Maybe nothing comes of it. Maybe something that changes how tennis reaches people who never thought the sport was for them. Maybe something that finally makes Alcott's proven methodology scalable through infrastructure that amplifies human observation instead of trying to replace it.

Either way, I'll be thinking about it. That's what my mind does when it sees systematic infrastructure meeting genuine format innovation meeting coach development opportunity meeting community access.

This wasn't where I started when I began thinking about INTENNSE. Started with Kano Solomon and Get It Poppin' and why tennis never had its Globetrotters moment. But when you follow infrastructure logic far enough, you see how one enabling environment creates opportunities for other enabling environments. How format innovation creates coach development opportunity. How coach development creates community engagement. How community engagement validates market demand. How market demand enables permanent infrastructure.

The Court 4 RV connects all of it. Mobile laboratory proving that the spark tennis has been missing isn't just about format. It's about creating infrastructure where expression and excellence reinforce each other, where systematic observation becomes teachable, where communities access what was never accessible before, and where coaches learn frameworks that actually work because they've seen them work in real competitive pressure.

Worth thinking about out loud.