The Talent Drain: How Private Academies Are Stealing the Spotlight from Federations

World tennis is undergoing a transformation: federal structures are losing their grip, while private academies are gaining ground.

© AFP

Arthur Millot

le 04/12/2025 à 18h29

2 min to read

Debru Extraits - Dossiers/Enquêtes Ljubicic Sinner

For decades, national federations reigned supreme. A single model, a defined pathway, standardized oversight: the federal route was almost mandatory for anyone dreaming of reaching the top level.

2015-2020: A significant shift

But starting in 2015, something began to crack. Families, increasingly well-informed, denounced a system that had become too slow, too rigid, too bureaucratic.

Infrastructure aged, innovation stalled, selections became muddled by criteria many deemed opaque.

At the same time, private structures became ultra-modern laboratories, capable of offering what federations refused or no longer knew how to provide.

Private academies: Where tennis reinvents itself

Extreme personalization, coaches from around the world, integrated mental approach, cutting-edge technology, total flexibility in programs.

The private offering professionalized at lightning speed. And for young players, a question arose: why stay within a federal framework?

Gabriel Debru, the example of a prodigy who left

Gabriel Debru is not just anyone.

Winner of the 2022 Roland-Garros juniors, one of the greatest hopes of French tennis, a trajectory many imagined as "classic": federal centers, FFT support, a programmed progression on the ATP tour.

But at the end of 2023, with the agreement of the FFT, Debru left France to join the Piatti Tennis Center in Italy, run by the legendary Riccardo Piatti, coach of Ljubicic and Sinner.

Since then, his path has taken a new turn as he joined the American university route, enrolling at the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois.

Sinner, Rune, Alcaraz, Gauff… All passed through private academies

But Gabriel Debru is not alone. On the current tour, many champions have also chosen the private route.

Holger Rune (Mouratoglou Academy at age 13), Jannik Sinner (Piatti Tennis Center at age 13), Coco Gauff (Mouratoglou Academy at age 10), and Carlos Alcaraz (Ferrero Tennis Academy at age 15) are perfect examples.

This choice, still marginal years ago, is now becoming a royal road for talented young players.

Find the full investigation on Tennis Temple this weekend

"Training Future Champions: Focus on the Decline of the French Public Model vs. Private Academies," available this weekend (December 6-7).