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

Tim:
You often see Pictures of the most ideal place to live you know on the beach, you know ... the Most idilic paradise and they always have a tennis court in the back garden or in my eyes they do anyway. And I’m hoping that one day i will live in such a place and be able to build a tennis court and i think most people would love to have a tennis court in their back garden and you’ve actually been lucky enough to have one in the past.
What sort of things are involved if you want to build a tennis court in your back yard?

David
Well i’ll answer the question, Tim, hopefully in it’s entirity. Your absolutely right, the image of tennis is something that everyone wants to relate to. To see a tennis court and hear the sound of tennis being played is a nostalgic type thing and very much part of what everybody wants to be involved with. You know, come Wimbledon the whole country stops and watches because its enthrawling to see the wonderful athleticism etc and of course the setting of the court is vital, the Wimbledon courts are wonderful. They are so green and so manicured and always there’s flowers around. Well, its just so nostalgic and so beautiful. The game... I understand what football is trying to do – they talk about the beautiful game. Well compared with tennis it ain’t beautiful at all. Tennis is the beautiful game. And wonderful skill and athleticism, and you name it.... wonderful... so everybody wants to be part of that. And of course everybody wants to have their own tennis court and that presents a problem. There was a time that when you had the ground you could put a tennis court up
Now you have to get planning permission. Now that’s a terrible shame.

So, you can’t just mow your lawn and paint few lines on there, and put a net up? Does that actually require permission from the local authorities?

Well no that doesn’t because your not changing the surface.

Right.

It is when you change the surface, so if you have a garden then it has to remain a garden...So if you put a hard surface down you have to seek permission – planning permission....

Right. Well that’s quite interesting because there’s probably lots of people who would like a court, but because they’re going down the hard court route they are not able to do it but if they wanted a grass court they might be successful.

Yes, well they don’t have to apply for planning permission and if when they do it they keep the height of the wire down to 2 meters then they can put wire around it at 2 feet high or certainly a guard around it at 2 feet high, and they’re not breaking any rules at all.

Right. That’s interesting.

Now, you might if you’ve got close neighbours, they might be offensive. Meaning they can say you’re neighbours from hell. That the sound of you enjoying yourself embitters them no end. So you get strange people... i say strange because they call the sound of tennis like Chinese water torture. They invent a way of saying that this wonder sound of tennis is like a pop concert shall we say.

You sound like you're talking from experience.

I've steered away, Tim, because I'm not very happy at all. You see I did have an experience where I was told that I could put a tennis court up and because a neighbour complained about the noise. They said that I couldn't continue my coaching from it. Actually I won... they were overruled, the planners were overruled and I did get permission and I did get permission by appeal.

Right.

So I got permission, but I'm afraid they were very mean to me.

What the neighbours?

No the planners. What they did is that gave me office hours to run my business. And it eliminated every bit of free time. That was the meanest trick they could have ever pulled. Because everybody knows that tennis people only become available during free time meaning after 5 o'clock and I could only work till 5 o'clock. So in one fell swoop they took away two thirds of what I could earn and they knew exactly what they were doing.

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