{"id":96223,"date":"2025-08-20T07:09:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T07:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/96223\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T07:09:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T07:09:23","slug":"usta-president-brian-vahaly-says-he-wants-tennis-to-be-a-safe-space-for-queer-people-as-u-s-open-approaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/96223\/","title":{"rendered":"USTA president Brian Vahaly says he wants tennis to be a \u2018safe space\u2019 for queer people as U.S. Open approaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vahaly said he knew that coming out on a Sports Illustrated podcast<\/a> would elicit a strong reaction from a sporting community that has the reputation of being largely white, straight and conservative. While his announcement was met with some support \u2014 multiple top players, including Roger Federer<\/a>, said an openly queer player would be \u201ctotally accepted\u201d in the men\u2019s locker room \u2014 Vahaly recalled receiving thousands of hateful messages about his young family.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of feedback I received about raising kids into this world, having kids without a mother,\u201d Vahaly said. \u201cI was disappointed to receive all of that, but I was very well-prepared.\u201d <\/p>\n

Reaching that place of self-acceptance was a lengthy process for Vahaly, who had developed a knack for compartmentalization as a pro athlete. \u201cUnfortunately, what was a great tennis asset was not a great personal-life asset. As feelings hit my mind, anything that felt not beneficial to my career was quickly compartmentalized and pushed to the side,\u201d he said. As a result, he said, he can\u2019t quite pinpoint when he realized he was gay.<\/p>\n

Having grown up in a religious and conservative household in Atlanta and then having immersed himself in a locker room culture where homophobic remarks were a common way \u201cto build camaraderie,\u201d Vahaly admitted that he had developed a lot of internalized homophobia. \u201cBack in those days, if I thought about a gay bar and what it meant to be gay, and I would see those people publicly, I thought to myself, \u2018That is not me. I have nothing in common with that group.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until his mid-20s that Vahaly, with the help of his longtime sports psychologist, began to come to terms with his sexuality. Part of that emotional work included unpacking his experience of undergoing so-called conversion therapy at a church, where he was told repeatedly that his attraction to men was a kind of \u201chorrible defect\u201d that could be cured by God. In retrospect, Vahaly said, he wasted years trying to change an immutable part of himself.<\/p>\n

In his second act, Vahaly has held senior executive positions at Washington, D.C.-based venture capital and investment management firms. But about five years after stepping away from tennis, he was asked to serve on the USTA\u2019s board. \u201cAs I was learning who I was, I didn\u2019t feel like tennis was a safe space for me, so I said no. Fortunately, the guy who was recruiting me knew me quite well and knew how to tap into my competitive side,\u201d Vahaly recalled with a laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you don\u2019t see people before you as a potential role model, it\u2019s hard to know, as a gay athlete and man, whether the organization \u2014 or a sport more broadly \u2014 would be comfortable with you in a leadership position,\u201d he added. \u201cWhen I came on, I was very guarded. Most board members for me were significantly older, often talking to me about their daughters. I just played it quiet and focused on where I thought I could make an impact, which was really on the player development side of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s tennis has historically had many openly gay players \u2014 including King, Navratilova and most recently Russian-born Australian Daria Kasatkina. But only one men\u2019s player has followed in Vahaly\u2019s footsteps: Brazil\u2019s Joao Lucas Reis da Silva, who reached a career high of No. 234 last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vahaly said he knew that coming out on a Sports Illustrated podcast would elicit a strong reaction from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-96223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}