The economic landscape of college sports has evolved radically in the last five years, and college tennis specifically has been at the forefront of controversy since the advent of new name, image and likeness (NIL) rules for student-athletes, allowing athletes in big-ticket sports to captialize financially while maintaining their amateur status.
However, due to complex rules surrounding amateurism, individual players in sports like tennis are still not permitted to accept prize money from professional tournament that equal to greater than their expenses, leading to several high-profile disputes between athletes and the NCAA.
Last summer, for example, 18-year-old Aussie Maya Joint turned heads by qualifying for, and reaching the third round of, the US Open weeks before she was set to enroll at the University of Texas. She passed up taking the $146,000 purse to maintain her eligibility, though she ended up turning professional before ever suiting up for the Longhorns.
“It’s absurd to me that a college athlete can take money from a local car dealership but can’t accept earned prize money from the US Open,” Andy Roddick said at the time.
