COURT DEVELOPMENT
Court development - an active period of growth, particularly in Real Tennis
The building of new courts or refurbishment of old courts, is usually led by an active individual or group in a particular location. Currently a court at Radley College is under construction, and there are very active groups hoping to build courts in Edinburgh, Harrogate, and Guildford, with half a dozen others at various stages in the pipeline. In the last 15 years, one new Rackets court has been built at St Paul’s School in London and six new Tennis courts have opened: Bristol and Bath, The Burroughs, Harbour Club, The Oratory School, and two at Prested Hall. Sadly, Harbour has subsequently closed. In the same period, three old Tennis courts have been restored to play after undergoing major refurbishment: the Cambridge blue court, the Hyde court at Bridport, and Newmarket. One 19th C. court at Troon currently stands idle whilst the building’s owners and a group of local enthusiasts are engaged in discussions over its future.
The T&RA is able to offer a supporting role in dealing with schools, planners, architects and possible funding. We do this by either seconding our own experienced people, or by recommending consultants. In the first instance, we ask you to contact our office at Queen’s. We have a limited amount of our own funding available to assist court development through grants and loans.
From March to August 2007 we compiled a report on what had been learnt about court development and refurbishment over the preceding 15 years, starting with the construction aspects. This is a ‘live’ document, in that it will be updated from time to time, and new subjects will be added. It is intended to give interested parties some ’steer’ in the right direction when it comes to Tennis court construction and refurbishment. You can access it by clicking here:
Everyone who has tried to build a court, or even refurbish one, in the last 15 years will, sadly, tell you that construction is the easy bit. The struggle to find a site, convince planners, and get funding is far more challenging than that of constructing it. And once built, the battle is to get good utilisation; the national weighted average court utilisation [summer and winter] is 63%, which gives room for growth on all but a few courts. Courts have been built to varying specifications, too, from the cheapest at about £0.5m to the most expensive at £1.25m.
Underpinning this PDF summary is a lot of good detailed information provided by many people and clubs who have kindly contributed to the report. This information is held at our office, for those interested in seeing more detail. We can also usually put you in direct touch with those who have built or refurbished courts. We would like to thank them all for their help over the last few months, and thank the compiling editor James Fleetwood of OUTC.
James Walton, Chairman, Communications and Court Development Sub Committee, Sept 07