PTPA Hosts Beyond The Court Summit at the NBPA Headquarters in NYC on August 20th and 21st.
Damon Valentino
New York City is bustling with tennis fans. They are flooding the city, to watch the 2025 US Open, which started on August 18th. There’s something different about the open this year. For the first time, the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA) organized two days of programming to highlight and educate on player wellness. This wasn’t the typical awareness event for the public. Instead, it was an intimate gather of players, agents, and their family and friends.
On Wednesday, August 20th, and Thursday, August 21st, the PTPA hosted its inaugural Beyond The Court Summit in support of player wellness. This exclusive, invitation-only event lasted two days. It was held at the National Basketball Players Association headquarters in New York City. Damon Valentino, PTPA Mental Fitness Director, curated a list of speakers. These included leading clinicians, researchers, mental health advocates, and professional athletes from different sports.
The theme of day one was “Awareness and Access – Why Mental Health is Performance Health.” This first session featured speakers including Deonte Harty (NFL Player), Keita Bates-Diop (NBA Player), Dr. Jason Wersland (Founder and Chief Wellness Officer of Therabody), and Dr. Brook Choulet (President, American Board of Sports & Performance Psychiatry).
For those lucky enough to be a part of the invite-only audience, they were able to hear Bates-Diop and Harty talk about optimizing recovery and how important mental health and emotional wellness are in achieving peak physical performance in their respective sports. The theme of day two was “Tools and Transformation – Training the Mind, Supporting the Human.” The audience heard from Dr. Robby Sikka (PTPA Medical Director), Rawle Andrews Jr. (Executive Director, American Psychiatric Association Foundation), Dr. Marcelo Bigliassi (Psychophysiologist), and more.
Big names in the health and wellness industry came together to partner on the event, showing the growing importance of supporting mental health initiatives. Ōura provided rings to the tennis players in attendance and Therabody demonstrated the role of the SleepMask and SmartGoggles in recovery. The American Psychiatric Association Foundation and The Steele Family Foundation’s Wise Scholarship Program also came together to support this event.
These events and initiatives are becoming the norm at industry events in professional sports, like the Super Bowl, the US Open, and the NBA’s Summer League. The players’ associations of each respective league are planning events to educate players, but also educate clinicians who are involved in treating the athletes. Earlier this year, the NFLPA hosted the Be Well conference ahead of the Super Bowl in New Orleans, LA. Spearheaded by Dr. Amber Cargill, Director of Player Wellness at the NFLPA, the Be Well initiative also featured a panel of players who spoke on their experiences with mental health in the context of professional football.
It is my hope that we will see an increasing number of these events surrounding championship events in professional sports, as these initiatives are actively normalizing the conversation are mental health in sport and providing education to those in attendance.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookchoulet/2025/08/24/ptpa-hosts-inaugural-beyond-the-court-summit-during-us-open-in-nyc/
