North Dulwich Lawn Tennis Club
154a East Dulwich Grove • North Dulwich, London • SE22 8TB
Dear all
Many thanks for those of you who have responded to the recent email on our decision to move to the Tiger Turf Artificial Grass on Courts 3&4. Whilst the majority of the comments were very supportive, there were a few expressing concerns and because it’s a big call for the club, we’d like to provide a little more detail on our ‘workings’ that led to the decision.
Firstly – a few of you have mentioned you would prefer a choice of surface and of course, in an ideal world, we all feel exactly the same. Once we reviewed the options though, we decided that the benefits of the Tiger Turf option outweighed this. Some of the reasons why we think this is the right approach are outlined in more detail below...
After our research and discussions with suppliers, it became clear, given the UK climate, that there were only 2 other practical options for us to consider a) artificial clay or b) the hard-court option as we have at the moment. We enquired about other hard-court options but, for example, having a rubberised topcoat on the hard courts comes with serious drawbacks in terms of drainage and maintenance.
Tiger Turf v Hard Court
In our recent membership survey, 60% preferred the tiger turf, 20% hard court and 20% no opinion, so a clear majority in favour of tiger turf.
This is backed up by court data - In the last 12 months, there were 4,454 member court bookings. Of those, 3,028 (68%) were for the top courts, and 1,426 (32%) were for the bottom courts. This would be even more comprehensive given that a proportion of the 32% was because 1 and 2 were already booked.
As we all know from recent weeks, Tiger Turf is much more playable than the hard courts, especially in the cold and after rain. This means extra playing time for everyone across the full year. There are lots of times now when 3 and 4 simply cannot be used but 1 and 2 can. Given that court availability is always an issue at the club, this feels valuable
Cost-wise, Tiger Turf has a 15-year lifespan v 10 years for the current hard court surface, so actually less expensive on a per-annum basis (£2,600 v £3,000)
Tiger Turf v Artificial Clay
We looked at this very carefully and took professional advice, especially given the location of courts 3&4. The clear advice we received was that, given the amount of leaf and seed debris from our trees, all tree debris would need to be handpicked from the clay every day, otherwise it would get into the clay and spoil the surface. So even with full time ground staff (which of course we don’t have), we felt that clay would not be a smart choice.
Cost-wise, its also more expensive (£50k) and less long-lasting - the equivalent cost per annum would be c £5,000 so nearly twice as expensive as Tiger Turf
In summary, having reviewed the facts, we felt that the advantages of Tiger Turf outweighed the argument for providing a choice of surface. We hope you find this explanation useful and feel free to reply to the note, email the committee at northdulwichtennis@yahoo.com - or of course chat to any of us.
Regards
The NDLTC Committee
10/12/2024
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