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

The size is important you see, but most people are led to believe that you need a piece of ground at least 120 long by 60 wide.

Is this yards?

No, that is feet.
120 feet by 60 feet and that constitutes by what is known... they might not tell you ... it’s the championship size of court and you can play a Davis Cup on that type of court. Cause it’s championship size but actually if you were going to play a Davis cup on it you’d have it a bit bigger than that. That is the stipulated smaller size for a court of top quality play – 120 by 60 feet. So, that is a size for top quality play, now you don’t need to have that in actual fact for a social type court. So, you can actually take off quite a lot, you can have it 110 (feet) by 55 (feet) for instance. You see...

And it doesn’t make too much difference to your play?

No indeed not, not if you're social and friendly type players. What it means that you can reduce the price of the court considerably – thousands of pounds less.

Wow, right, OK.

Because if you take that 10 off and 5 off that’s a lot of tarmac right the way round the outside of the court.

Yeah.

So you can reduce it by a lot of money.

Next Part>>