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Tennis court construction Down Under

Sport surface placement

Austrailian Open Tennis Surface Preparation

McConnell, Tennis Services help ready new surfaces for Australian Open.

Don Hubbard says that while it can take a lot of pressure and a lot of squeegee angle to move heavy material or material with a lot of sand, the key is to let the material "float" over the pavement, especially on the first coat.

"Using a squeegee is just something you learn after doing it a little bit," Hubbard says. "We always squeegee tennis courts and it's nothing for us to squeegee small parking lots."

"We screed across the pavement and if the patch ends up too thick we'll run a grinder across it to level it out," Hubbard says. "It's easier to make a thicker patch and grind it down than to try to construct a thin patch in layers to get it right."

Three courts prior to layout and striping. Don Hubbard says layout always begins from the center anchor, but before starting layout, crews measure to make sure the center anchor is actually in the center of the court.

Once lines are measured and snapped, a tape machine that places two lines of tape simultaneously is essential to striping tennis courts. Paint is applied by hand with rollers between the lines of tape, and tape is then removed leaving straight lines and sharp edges.

The finished surface on one of the Australian Open's main tennis courts.

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Winter downtime is the right time to take care of sealer applicators

By Allan Heydorn
Editor

Contractors are known to go to great lengths to get the job done and satisfy their customers, but what McConnell & Associates and Tennis Services of Iowa did last fall has to be some kind of record.

That's because at the request of California Products Corp., a manufacturer of tennis court surfaces, representatives of both contractors traveled to Australia to assist a local contractor constructing new surfaces for this year's Australian Open, one of the Grand Slam tennis tournaments.

I mean, how much farther can you go to satisfy a client?

Last fall McConnell's Don Hubbard, tennis court superintendent, Jaime Ocampo, foreman, and Dan Treiber, owner of Tennis Services of Iowa, were asked to assist Melbourne's W.M. Loud in resurfacing the courts in time for the 2008 Open. In a normal year Loud's crews would resurface and stripe about 80 tennis courts a year.

"They have a great workforce at Loud, and they do a great job," Hubbard says. "But when they got the contract for the 40 additional courts, and the tight deadline, they wanted a little extra assistance just for insurance."

So Loud contacted California Products Corp., which contacted McConnell and Tennis Services because both are authorized applicators of California Products' material. Hubbard spent six weeks down under assisting Loud's crew, Ocampo worked there eight weeks, and Treiber worked for three weeks. Contractors from India and Singapore also flew in to help, and it all worked out fine as the courts were done in plenty of time for Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova to take home their Australian Open trophies.

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