Bentwood tennis pro Kevin Collins named USTA Texas section president

It's an opportunity he couldn't turn down.

Longtime Bentwood Country Club tennis pro Kevin Collins became the first San Angeloan to serve as president of the United States Tennis Association (USTA) Texas section when he took over the role in July.

"It's something I've always kind of wanted to do," Collins said. "I've always wanted to make sure that I gave back to tennis because it gave so much to me and I like being involved with the growth of the game.

"Coming out of the pandemic, tennis has increased by 22%. There's 22% more players playing tennis than prior to the pandemic. So tennis is in a specific growth surge at this point and now our goal is to maintain and keep those players playing. During the pandemic, tennis was one of the safest things you could do."

Collins was elected to be the USTA Texas section president. He started getting involved with leadership in USTA many years ago, but really was in the spotlight in 2017 when Bentwood won the USTA national facility award.

"At that point, I started getting reached out to a little bit more by people in leadership positions, so I think that's kind of what got me started on that path," Collins said. "I was nominated to be on the board (in 2018) and then moved into a management committee position."

Twenty-seven people form the USTA Texas board of directors, and nine of them are on the management committee, which governs most of the day-to-day activities across the state.

Collins has been on that committee for two terms now.

"I was elected by the board of directors to become the USTA president for 2023 and 2024," Collins said. "But since I've been elected in July, the current president resigned due to some issues.

"They voted me to become the president immediately. I was supposed to be starting out in January of next year, but because of those circumstances (with the former president), I've been kind of put in that position about six months earlier than anticipated."

There are 25 staff members in the USTA Texas section. Collins says the state has roughly 60,000 USTA league players and 35,000 junior players.

He is the first San Angeloan to serve in his new role, but there have been past presidents from the West Texas area, including one from Amarillo and Abilene.

Collins' new position is a voluntary role, like all the other 180 USTA volunteers in Texas.

"There are perks," he said with a smile. "Obviously, we get to go see a lot of good tennis and I'm going to be at the U.S. Open for seven days. But it's not all just fun and games when I'm at the Open because we have our meetings there as well.

"There's only 17 sections and Texas is the third-largest. There's a presidents committee that reports to the national board of USTA. There's basically about 51 people total that govern the United States Tennis Association and I'm one of those 51 people now."

Collins and his wife, Kim, will get to spend an evening in the presidents suite at the Open, which runs through Sept. 11.

In addition to being a tennis pro at Bentwood for more than 30 years, Collins has also been a volunteer assistant coach for Angelo State University's women's team the past three years, something that's very special to him.

"Even though Bentwood is my home, I'm an advocate for total tennis," Collins said.

This article originally appeared on San Angelo Standard-Times: Bentwood tennis pro Kevin Collins named USTA Texas section president