ORLANDO, Fla. — After a two-and-a-half-hour drive up from her tennis academy in Boca Raton, Fla., on Wednesday evening, Chris Evert and her brother John arrived at the United States Tennis Association’s gleaming new facility and were struck by the sheer size of it.
With 100 courts, a dormitory, a strength and conditioning center, a cafe and ample parking, the complex in the Lake Nona community dwarfs most other tennis academies, including Evert’s, which had been renting out space to the U.S.T.A. for years.
The 64-acre, $63 million campus, which formally opened on Thursday, was built to grow the game at the grass-roots level and to develop future Grand Slam champions, something American tennis has been lacking beyond Serena and Venus Williams.