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.

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And you had the corners cut off at 45 degrees didn't you off your court, why did you do that?

That's right I was the first one to do it. I had to do my own appeasing you see. The planners didn't stop me originally building the court - they said I could have it in the garden. And so I went ahead and had it done. It was only when the neighbour protested that I had a problem. And my wife was the only one that I had a problem with you see, because it was it her beautiful garden and she loves her flowers and things like this. And she said well you can have it, I'd much rather have my garden the like it is but you can have the court in there if you want, but can you shape it so that it doesn't offend me so much. And I said, "Well I suppose I could shape it", because the corners of a tennis court is never really used. The balls lodge in the corners and that's the only real use - they lodge in the corners. In actual fact all tennis courts have moss on them and in my experience at certain times of the years when moss is growing I have noticed on every tennis court that the corner is rounded off, where people don't run into the corner of the court they run around... in a sense keep away from that.

So the moss shows where the people are actually running and they run every run into the corners?

No, it actually shows where they don't run. They keep the moss down. If they play right through the year it keeps the moss down, but where the moss shows is where you don't run. So a couple of feet from the back and then all the corners are moss covered, so what I did was I cut the corners at 45 degrees and it had two effects. There was no moss on the court or relatively none on the court, but the ball when they hit 45 degrees trickled to the back of the court and they didn't lodge in the corners - they just rolled back along the back of the court and were easy to pick up. It was a beautiful little court. The best court you could every have - a cut corner court.

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