NEW YORK -- Emily Rosenthal and her two friends Russell and Jenny Dormand proudly wore their David Nalbandian and Andre Agassi T-shirts to the U.S. Open last week.

	Tennis fans can't sport T-shirts of their favorite players because there are none to be bought at the Open.

Part of their pride had to do with their love for the players whose images were on their chests, the other part -- the fact that the three shirts were homemade, printed on transfer paper from their computer and ironed on.

"It's amazing you can't buy an Andre Agassi or Lleyton Hewitt shirt here," said Rosenthal, a 16-year-old tennis fan from Landsdowne, Pa.

There are hundreds of items available for purchase on the grounds of the USTA National Tennis Center, from match-used balls for $5.00 to tennis outfits from every major manufacturer. But nearly every item is branded "U.S. Open 2003," and save for a Nike shirt with a small image of James Blake on it, packs of tennis cards and a U.S. Open calendar with players images inside, there is nothing for a fan of a particular tennis player to buy.

Sorry Roddick fans, there are no posters featuring the most talked about young American in the game. Those supporting Jennifer Capriati can forget about returning home with an 8-by-10 glossy photo.

The major U.S. sports organizations and their respective players' unions including Major League Baseball, the NBA, NHL and NFL love selling athlete-specific clothing, not only because they earn royalty fees from the manufacturer but also because the owner of the item wears it and automatically becomes a walking billboard for the sport.

The USTA might get a nice buzz from its U.S. Open memorabilia, but the ATP and the WTA don't benefit from this tremendous marketing opportunity. Insiders cite the lack of a players union, the constant turnover in the rankings and the inability to make ends meet as the primary reason why fans who want to support a particular player get no help from the sport's organizational bodies.

"Tennis is stuck in the 1970s and '80s," said Chris Carey, president of the Maven Group, whose NetPro tennis cards are among the few player specific items at the Open. "How is it possible to have nearly nothing with the players on it?"

Unlike the players' associations in the other major sports, which grant permission to licensees to use the league's entire roster of players, tennis players own their own rights to their name and likeness. That makes it hard for memorabilia manufacturers to do business with a group of players.

When the Maven Group decided it would make an 85-player set of tennis cards, company officials knew it would take about a year to sign that many players.

"There's not one standard contract," Carey said. "Every player is not paid the same and every player has different stipulations."

	T-shirts for the WTA's "Get In Touch With Your Feminine Side" campaign are selling well at the Open.

The ATP and WTA officials say they can only do so much, since they can't aggregate the players marketing efforts and can only use them individually if they are promoting the game and in groups of five on merchandise.

"Under the current structure, it is difficult for us to develop marketing plans that are player specific," said WTA spokesman Darrell Fry. "We've had a lot of success marketing our players in groups."

Still, NASCAR licensees have to work with each individual driver and that hasn't stopped stock car racing from being one of the most mass merchandised sports properties in the entire world. Companies like Action Performance make clothing and die cast replica cars with the names and images of top drivers such as Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart. Approximately 200 other licensees put the drivers names and images on everything from photos and hats to lamps and fishing lures.

In June, the WTA launched their "Get In Touch With Your Feminine Side" campaign, which features 10 players including Venus and Serena Williams, Kim Clijsters and Daniela Hantuchova in television and print advertising. Pink T-shirts that feature the slogan, but do not include any of the players names or images, are selling well.

"We can't keep them in stock," Fry said.

In April, the ATP started testing what the response would be to shirts with the players images on it. Shirts featuring their slogan, "New Balls Please" with Andy Roddick, James Blake and Roger Federer on them, sold well at the Tennis Masters Series event in Monte Carlo, one ATP official said.

But Jeff Tarango, an outspoken 14-year tour veteran who retired Thursday, said that ATP Tour officials haven't done enough.

"They definitely need to change their thinking on how to market," Tarango said. "They need a whole new group. I hate to say fire the lot, but they probably should. They need to really re-think how they are marketing tennis and what they are trying to sell and not be so worried if they are only making one penny on a T-shirt. The fact that they are getting the T-shirts out there I think is more important."

When players sign endorsement contracts with manufacturers such as adidas, Fila, Nike, Puma and Reebok, their name and likeness rights are often passed on to the manufacturer.

"In the majority of the contracts, the manufacturers have the exclusive right to use the athlete on their clothing designs, but they haven't done much in recent years," said Patrick McGee, vice president of athlete marketing for Octagon, which represents Hewitt and Anna Kournikova, among others.

Officials with the major manufacturers say that individual tennis player paraphernalia has to make financial sense in order for it to become commonplace.

"We've done T-shirts with (Mark) Philippoussis, we've done it with (Jennifer) Capriati and we just haven't had great success with athlete graphics," said Howe Burch, senior vice president of U.S. sports marketing for Fila, the official footwear and apparel sponsor of the U.S. Open. "We found that people are more interested in having items that show that they went to the event."

"If it makes business sense to make a T-shirt with an athlete's image on it, we'll do it, as we've done before with Andre Agassi and Tiger Woods," said Nike spokesman Dave Mingey.

	It's a safe bet that Andy Roddick's fans would be willing to buy as many t-shirts as Jeff Gordon's faithful.

While Roddick helps with the design of his shoe and clothing -- for his current shoe he wanted to look like a Hummer and he's expressed to Reebok officials that he wants to go retro for next year's Wimbledon -- there are no immediate plans for any Roddick-branded clothing, according to Dianne Hays, global tennis sports marketing director of Reebok. But Roddick's agent Ken Meyerson said that plans to utilize Roddick might be in Reebok's future.

"The hot gun this year is obviously Roddick," said Stephen Jones from Bronxville, N.Y., who brought his 7-year-old son Owen with him to the U.S. Open. "A lot of kids my son's age clearly would be wearing those shirts if they had them."

The Reebok mesh trucker hat that Roddick wore for his first two matches isn't even available at retail outlets at the Open. One of the most extensive Roddick merchandise offerings -- aside from secondary marketplace sites like eBay -- can be found on his Web site, www.andyroddick.com, and even that is sparce, with three posters and a bobblehead for sale.

Agents say that athlete-branded clothing offerings might always be few and far between.

"The big clothing manufacturers have to justify the cost in sales not just in a particular country, but worldwide," said Colin Smeeton, an SFX agent who represents Paradorn Srichaphan. "Andre might be able to sell shirts and maybe Andy is the next guy, but it's not good enough for Nike to come out with a Carlos Moya line in Spain, if it won't sell here in the United States."

Agent John Tobias, who also works for SFX, says that the mass merchandising business in tennis is also compromised by the fact that there's much more turnover in the sport, making it tougher on manufacturers to control moments where they can capitalize.

"The top seeds are getting beaten all the time," Tobias said. "It's not like it was in the late '80s and early '90s, when the top 10 wasn't changing that much from year to year and the same players were making the quarterfinals in the Grand Slams."

"The manufacturers obviously aren't making enough money or we'd see much more of it," said U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe. "But it's strange to think that it wouldn't make sense to have some Roddick shirts at the U.S. Open."

And if there are any shirts featuring the American ranked No. 4 in the world, odds are it's an iron-on.

Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at darren.rovell@espn3.com.