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Young tweets expletive-filled rant toward USTA

April 23, 2011 - Ticker

Donald Young’s expletive-filled outburst at the USTA on Twitter was in response to him not receiving a wild card into Roland Garros prior to the organization holding a tournament for it, TENNIS.com has learned.

After Young won the Tallahassee Challenger last Sunday, a member of his camp e-mailed the USTA and requested that he be given the organization's wild card, even though the USTA had its wild-card playoff set to start in Boca Raton from Tuesday-Friday, with six players already entered. The USTA denied his request, and Young subsequently fell 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 to Tim Smyczek in the final. After his loss, Young then tweeted:

"F*** USTA! Their full of s***! They have screwed me for the last time!"

A little while later Young shut down his Twitter page.

Even though Young won Tallahassee and cracked the Top 100, at No. 98, he missed the rankings cut-off for the French Open the week prior, when he failed to qualify for Houston. Young had his best tournament ever in March at Indian Wells when qualified and upset Andy Murray in the second round. But he fell to Dennis Istomin in the first round of Miami the following week and failed to make enough rankings headway.

Young’s response was surprising, given that the ruling body of American tennis has provided him with free coaching and training throughout different periods of his career, and he recently credited the USTA for helping get him into shape and more focused on his game. He has used USTA coaches at almost every tournament he has entered in 2011 and has also used them at USTA training centers in Florida and California.

While the 21-year-old has been using USTA coaching, he is also still coached by his parents, Donald Sr. and Illona, and was working with his mother at the Houston tournament. The USTA has said in the past that it is willing to work with his parents, but they want him to spend some time alone with its coaches, which he did last winter in California, when he was working out with fellow players Sam Querrey and Mardy Fish, and right after the Australian Open in Florida, when he was working with USTA coach Jay Berger.

It is unclear why Young thought the USTA would cancel its pre-established wild card playoff when fellow players Smyczek, Denis Kudla, Andrea Collarini, Alexios Halebian and Jordan Cox had already been invited to play and were on site at the Boca West Country Club.

Neither Young nor his representatives responded to requests for comments.

American teenager Ryan Harrison, who has won USTA wild card play-offs before, declined to play the Boca tournament, saying that he wanted to earn his way into the Grand Slams the hard way by qualifying on site.

The USTA and the French Tennis Federation have a reciprocal agreement in which men’s and women’s singles main draw wild cards into the 2011 French Open and the 2011 U.S. Open are exchanged.

P. Mac: Young must apologize before any USTA help
April 25, 2011 - AP

(AP)—Maybe Patrick McEnroe and Donald Young can work this thing out at a Cee Lo concert.

One of America’s most respected names in tennis and one its top young hopefuls are using the media—social and traditional—in a war of words that began with Young’s expletive-laden rip on the USTA via Twitter over what he perceived as a snub in the handing out of a wild-card spot for the French Open.

The dispute picked up again Monday, when McEnroe held a conference call with reporters in which he demanded an apology and all but called Young an ingrate with an overbearing family.

Young’s tweet came out after he lost last Friday in the final of a tournament that determined who would receive the USTA’s wild-card entry into the French Open. It channeled the hit Cee Lo song—the scrubbed-up version of which is called “Forget You” on most family radio stations.

“(Expletive) USTA! Their full of (expletive)! They have (expletive) me for the last time!” Young wrote shortly after his loss to Tim Smyczek.

McEnroe, the head of the USTA’s player development program, countered with the same basic message, minus the swearing, by saying he was offended and calling for Young to apologize if he wants to continue his relationship with the USTA.

“I’m offended for people on our team that have worked very hard,” McEnroe said. “When he said what he said, it was taken quite personally by members of the player development team. I think Donald should apologize for what he said. At that point, we can all move on.”

McEnroe detailed a laundry list of grant money, coaching and training opportunities Atlanta-based Young has received from the USTA since 2005. But Young also has stayed under the tutelage of his parents, Donald Sr. and Illona, and that has caused tension over the years, as the parents and the USTA have differed on the best training regimen for the 21-year-old player.

A voicemail left by The Associated Press at the parents’ house was not immediately returned.

The long-simmering tension took an ugly, public turn in the past few days because of quirks in the ranking system and the USTA’s method of doling out wild-card entries to the majors. The USTA receives one wild-card entry for men and women for the French Open and can distribute them however it pleases. It chose to conduct a six-person tournament in Boca Raton, Fla., because, according to McEnroe, “We want to send a message to our players that we would like them to earn their way into every step along the way.”

Young, who defeated second-ranked Andy Murray at Indian Wells last month, recently won a lower-level tournament in Tallahassee, Fla., that vaulted him into the top 100—the cutoff for automatic entry into the French. But his ranking didn’t rise until a week after the cutoff date for Roland Garros. That forced him to play in the wild-card tournament in Florida, where he lost in the final.

He still can make the French by going through the qualifier in Paris the week before the tournament.

But Young wasn’t looking ahead when he tweeted on Friday. A bit after the expletive-filled post, Young followed up by tweeting, “That tweet was out of character. ive never been like that before. but im tired of it. sry about the language, but not the thought behind it.”

By the weekend, he had shut down his Twitter account.

McEnroe, meanwhile, spent the weekend stewing.

He said in addition to the coaching and financial help, the USTA has given Young 13 wild-card entries into different U.S. Open draws over the years. He said the method of awarding this year’s French Open wild-card spot had been determined well in advance and Young knew about it when a member of his team emailed the USTA requesting he be given the federation’s wild-card.

Though McEnroe wasn’t shutting any doors on Young, who has made it as far as the third round in a Grand Slam tournament only once, he sounded fed up with what has been a long-running soap opera between the USTA and Young’s family.

“We would like to at least feel like we get, ‘Hey, thanks for helping me out,”’ McEnroe said. “Unfortunately, we haven’t heard that enough, if at all. I’m not going to go into details, but suffice to say, this wasn’t just one tweet that a youngster made in being ticked off. This is the tip of the iceberg, basically.”