This chapter explores safeguarding as a duty on tennis sport governing bodies (SGBs) and tennis academies in respect of their athletes, whether junior or senior. The chapter considers safeguarding as a duty of care, the violation of which gives rise to tort-based liability. It looks at the various instruments and codes adopted by tennis SGBs, as well as by national tennis federations, including also their monitoring processes. The chapter explores how these processes are enforced with a view to limiting exposure to risks present or future. The chapter also considers health and safety as part of the duty of safeguarding and goes on to point out legal consequences for failure to meet safeguarding obligations.

We assess how change to gender equality might be achieved from the top down. Policymakers in the context of college sports are athletic department administrators. They can directly affect policy via the NCAA rulemaking committees and must implement policy at individual schools. We also explore the role of coaches; while they have less direct policy control, they still make hiring decisions within their team staffs and serve as important intermediaries between student-athletes and administrators. We build on work on organizational culture to predict that as women move into higher leadership roles (i.e., head coach or administrative department head), they become less supportive of gender equity initiatives. We show that is indeed the case; moreover, we find that, more generally, female coaches and athletic administrators exhibit less support for equity initiatives than female student-athletes. This suggests that organizational culture – where women administrators and coaches remain in the clear minority – is a hurdle to equality. It shows that marginalized groups pursuing change from the top down must contend with organizational cultures that are at odds with such transformation.