David's Best Tips:

• Planning permission may not be required for building a grass court in your back yard.
• Allthough the stipulated area for a tennis court is 120 feet by 60 feet, 110 by 55 is adequate for most people and can shave thousands off the cost.
• Putting fencing only around the backs of the court saves money and is visually less intrusive.
• Cutting the corners off at 45 degrees doesn't effect play but instead is visually more pleasing and it also trickles the balls to the centre of the court behind the baseline.

Click Play Button Now to listen to our Tennis Court Conversation

Would you ever recommend that someone ever try to keep their own grass court in their back yard?

Well the answer to it is that the people that do it love it. Absolutely, and it is a great pride that they have in it. I've know several people have their own court and you wouldn't get worse bounces that on a privately run grass court. But the people love them. They love to invite you to play on their grass court and occasionally I get an invitation, and my knees don't bend as much as they used to. And these balls that shoot along the ground because of the uneven surface present me with an amazing problem. They play on it all the time, but they almost know when it's going to shoot.

They've memorised where all the bad bounces happen.

But they get great fun out of their grass courts. Most of them are in rather lovely situations, but the people are who play on them are ... how can I say it? ... are very proud of their court. And they only play on their grass court - on their own patch. And very rarely do they venture off of it, and that means that they only play in the summer months, a couple of months a year. But they just love their grass courts. So, what can a say? Horses for courses. If you want to play every day, providing the weather's reasonably good, if you want to do it that way. Right through out the year, you don't want a grass court do you?...

But there's nothing more pleasing to the eye than a nice grass court in your back garden?

No, not if you cut it properly. You can change the pattern. You can go up and down, and squares, and across, and you can do it corner to corner type of thing. And you can have patterns on the court. You can do what ever you like. Now some people are so insensitive to the beauty of a tennis court they don't even notice you've done it. So it's really in the eye of the beholder and done by a certain person.

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