The USTA Florida Section’s first employee in 1980, when it was still known as the Florida Tennis Association (FTA), Bobby Curtis worked out of his home before establishing the organization’s first headquarters in Miami Shores in 1983.
Up until that moment in time, Curtis worked for the Youth Tennis Foundation of Florida, where he organized junior tennis as the state coordinator. In 1987, the Florida Tennis Association took over the administration of the program that was built by the YTF and Curtis and renamed it to Junior Team Tennis. In 1991, the United States Tennis Association adopted the program and went on to offer Junior Team Tennis nationwide. Today, more than 60,000 youth participate in the league.
“I’m proud of helping to create Junior Team Tennis, where we had a model and the USTA picked it up,” Curtis said in 2009. “Starting the Lakeland event [the Jr. Team Tennis State Championships], it was so much fun, and in those days the kids had to be unranked so we were dealing with a different spectrum than the tournament players. Also getting involved in the National Junior Tennis League and what became the Greater Miami Tennis & Education Foundation, that changed a lot of kid’s lives through the years and it’s still going today. That’s been a nice feather in the cap.”
