The USTA recently announced that it was moving its national player development headquarters from Key Biscayne, Florida to the Chris Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Florida.  Promising juniors, aged 14-18, will be housed and trained by Evert and others at the Academy.  Through its $15 million annual player development budget, the USTA will also support other promising juniors and young pros in various ways.  Should the USTA be in the business of producing future champions and if so, how can it succeed in this effort?  The recent poor showings by Americans at the French and Wimbledon have put even more pressure on the USTA to do something.  Although, many countries like Sweden, France and Spain have more comprehensive and successful junior programs, the reality is that most champions have charted their own courses albeit with some support from their national associations along the way.  One can argue about whether champions are born or made or whether it's often a little of both, but most past champions have succeeded by following their own unique routes, e.g. Federer, Becker, Graf, Noah, Borg, Nadal, Bruguera, Ferrero, Moya, Safin, Sharapova, Seles, etc.  If the USTA focuses its efforts on getting more kids to play the game beginning at an early age and continuing into their teens, then it will have a greater pool of potential champions while also creating more lifelong players.  But it won’t be easy because kids today have so many more athletic and entertainment options to entice them.  In a way, the challenge facing the USTA reminds me of the choices facing funders who are trying to improve the education of inner city kids (check out a DVD of a film called "Baraka") or international health workers trying to solve global health crises (read a book called “Mountains Beyond Mountains” about Dr. Paul Farmer).  Should you spend $20,000 on one student/patient/player or $10 on 2000 players?  In the end, it depends on what your ultimate goal is...