ABSTRACT
In the 1970s, Chicano activist Bill Molina called a San Diego city official to ask why there were no tennis courts in Barrio Logan, a Mexican neighborhood in downtown San Diego. The city official bluntly responded: ‘Chicanos do not play tennis’ (personal correspondence, 1 July 2013). Such a comment reflects a popular stereotype that US Latino/as do not play tennis. While most people could identify top-ranked players in recent years from Spain and South America, such as Rafael Nadal, Gustavo Kuerten and David Nalbandian, Latino/as in the United States are still underrepresented in professional tennis (Kaufman 2009). Unlike Latin American players who learn tennis in their home country, Latino/as who are born or raised in the US encounter different racial, gender and class obstacles. According to the Pew Research Center (2016), Latinos make up 57 million or 17 percent of the US population, but their numbers in American tennis remains staggering low.
