USTA spending $5 million but leaving out celebrities in effort to increase recreational play

A broadcast element to the effort will begin later in the summer.

Unlike a celebrity-studded campaign two years ago, this one featured shots of tennis courts depicted as refuges from the hectic pace of daily life.

The ads are breaking in Newsweek, ESPN The Magazine, Oprah, Tennis, Univision.com, Yahoo! En Espanol, ESPN.com and Weather.com.

The USTA earns more than $100 million from the U.S. Open, and pumps much of that back into increasing participation in the sport. After a boom in the 1970s and early ’80s, the game entered a long period of decline.

But the USTA says the sport is the only one to enjoy an increase in recreational play over the last six years, with total players now standing at about 24 million.