The Way the Ball Bounces on New Tennis Surfaces

Back when tennis rackets were racquets, their heft was that of a wooden club built to double as a snowshoe. Sneakers were canvas-topped galoshes. Hard courts were no more than parking lots with nets.

“And if you didn’t want to carry around an extra 15 pounds,” remembered Sidney Wood, then a Wimbledon singles champion, now a super senior tournament threat at 72, “you tried not to perspire in your woolen sweater and flannel pants.”

Now, by golly and by graphite, the name of the game is high-technology tennis. Shoes with adjustable shock absorbers are afoot. In hand are composition, computer-engineered rackets (regular, mid- and manhole-sized) that are more likely to be endorsed by wind tunnels than autographed by players.

Yellow balls. Two-tone balls. Soft balls. There’s even a new hacker’s delight from Wilson, a 7% oversize ball for slower play, longer rallies and greater enjoyment.

But those courts? Sadly, barely a quiver of improvement since before Bill Tilden. From gray parking lot to green parking lot is about all. Grass and clay back East. Concrete and asphalt out West.

Until right about now . . . and a sudden, belated devotion to playing surfaces as the latest throe in the dynamism of modern tennis.

NBC president Grant Tinker has ordered a new court for his home and it will be a soft, five-laminate, rubberized, outdoor carpet. Called, cutely, Esprit de Court. At the Racquet Club of Irvine and at the Westshore Tennis Club at Westlake Village and the Pasadena Athletic Club there is look-alike lawn tennis on synthetic grass stabilized by fine sand. That’s Omnicourt. There’s a plastic mesh said to play like clay and a synthetic rubber and fiberglass surface giving the footing of a boat deck with none of the nausea.

“It’s all pretty radical, but an advance that is going hand in glove with other developments such as racquets, shoes, things like that,” said George Peebles. He has been building courts of all surfaces for 25 years as owner of Pacific Tennis Courts, with branches from Hawaii to Panorama City. That also covers Peebles’ playing territory as a 67-year-old tennis bum and doubles partner of Bobby Riggs. “Nothing has really changed with court surfaces since 1966 and acrylic surfacing. And that was the only change for, oh, 20 or 30 years when you just put down raw concrete with bathroom tiles for lines.”

“When I was 40,” once said associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, “my doctor advised me that a man in his 40s shouldn’t play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again.”

So let the record show that tennis accommodates all. Further, let it be known that advances in equipment (from Space-Age knee braces for the lame, to Day-Glo orange balls for the myopic) since the sport exploded in 1970 have allowed almost indefinite participation by older players. Ergo, local and national senior tournaments have formed (with the Montecito Country Club, Santa Barbara, as site of the nationals) where 45-year-olds are callow first-graders among the truly serious veterans who play in a division for 80-year-olds and the rest.

Hard courts, however, have not been quite so easy on the courtiers.

Van Zerbe is the 77-year-old director of tennis at the Montecito Country Club. In father-son doubles (partnered by his middle-aged lad, actor Anthony Zerbe) he once was ranked 15th in the nation. Three months ago, the older Zerbe underwent hip replacement surgery.

“You can bet that 65 years of playing on cement had a lot to do with it,” he said.

Jack Kramer is a legend. Davis Cup, Wimbledon and Forest Hills and three-time father--of California hard court tennis, the serve-and-volley game and professional tennis.

He also limps from bad hips. “Until I turned pro and was forced to play around the world, I played nothing but concrete,” Kramer recalled. “It’s a pounding.”

Resurfacing the Court

So Kramer, as a compromise with doctor’s orders, is resurfacing the court at his home at La Quinta--with the cushioned Esprit de Court.

Zerbe, although banned from hard courts until his hip was ready, did play tennis during convalescence--on his club’s grass, the original court surface currently being imitated and replaced by man-made piles, even at Wimbledon where a lone Omnicourt has been in experimental use for almost two years.

“Last year, maybe one out of 100 who called would inquire about the possibility of soft surfaces,” reported Paul Geyer of Pacific Tennis Courts. “Now 25% of the callers are inquiring about those surfaces and of all the courts we are doing now (250 a year) about 10% will be soft surface.”

Cartilage damage. Shin splints. Stress fractures. The results of slamming bones against concrete, say sports physicians, are quite predictable. Even among younger players. Especially among older hitters.

And now that tennis is considered (a) exercise, (b) a social activity, (c) a psychological release and (d) a business activity, orthopedic surgeons such as Harold Markovitz of Century City are worth their weight in Ace bandages.

“My patients are generally successful, active, a number of them are over 40 and if they are playing regularly on concrete courts there is going to be some effect,” he said. “What they’ve done in their 20s will show up in their 40s . . . and I have somewhere between 50 or 100 patients where their problems would be helped by a softer court surface, no question about it.

“So they (softer surfaces) are certainly my medical recommendation, part of the treatment, with the objective to keep them (patients) playing longer and enjoying it more.”

Markovitz played tennis at Columbia and considers himself active. With a tennis court at home, he obviously is successful. Yet there’s a problem. . . .

He grew up playing on East Coast courts; grass, clay and asphalt. “Very rarely did I play on cement (concrete) courts but here (in California) that’s been the way to go and without anyone going out of their way to do anything about the (hard) surface.”

So Markovitz, now 50, has started to feel it. “I can’t play as long (on concrete) as I want to,” he said.

The prescription, however, has been easy.

And as soon as workers are finished installing friend Grant Tinker’s cushioned court, they will start work on an identical resurfacing of the doctor’s court.

Commentators, with insatiable, unassailable reverence, love to quote English poet Gordon Bottomley.

“When you destroy a blade of grass,” he wrote, “you poison England at her roots.”

That Bottomley was condemning industrial pollution and iron foundries is generally lost on purists who prefer to think the grass is greener among the lawn tennis set. Especially at those verdant temples of Wimbledon, Forest Hills, N.Y., Newport Casino, R.I., and Seabright Lawn Tennis and Cricket Club, N.J.--where, incidentally, they haven’t played cricket since the 1890s.

Jack Kramer isn’t quite that romantic: “Playing grass definitely is an opportunity . . . a chance to find out how lousy grass really is.”

Art Buchwald has conjured up a better image: “I love to play tennis on grass. It’s like making love in yogurt.”

Truth is, one hard set will convert a grass court from pristine putting green into a lumpy, grumpy square of rye, fescue or bent grasses dedicated to capricious kicks and erratic bounces.

Yet it certainly is easy on the toes.

Then there are courts of powdered clay. They are famous for slow bounces where the ball should be arrested for loitering. Also gritty grazes, red feet, dyed sneakers and horrendous maintenance bills for daily watering and brushing.

Yet they are definitely soft on the feet.

Then there are hard courts. Asphalt. Bare concrete. Painted concrete. Acrylic-covered concrete. All about as resilient as Kleenex-covered cannonballs.

“So about 14 years ago, almost as a hobby, I decided to get (develop) a court with a lot of cushion,” said Sidney Wood, president of Court Crafters, Woodside, N.Y. “I was looking for something with no maintenance, an eroding zone (base line) that wouldn’t wear and a court that would always play like grass in midsummer.”

Trial and Error

He experimented with AstroTurf. Then indoor-outdoor carpeting. “Trial and error but mostly error,” he said, “until I came up with Supreme Court for indoor use, a PVC (polyvinyl chloride) textured for a slow-ball skid.”

A Tokyo dealer ordered 150 courts. He installed them outdoors at a seaside resort. Where, thanks to salt air and sun, the fiberglass backing peeled away from the carpeting.

“The thing was a huge success,” remembered Wood, “except that it didn’t work outdoors.”

Back at his drawing board and test tubes, Wood researched another surface. The result was Esprit de Court (“named after my French grandmother”) that was first set down two years ago and hasn’t peeled back since.

Forty such courts are now in use in Eastern states. Fifteen Californians, including Kramer, Tinker and Markovitz, have courts on order. For $10,000, promises Wood, he will cover existing hard courts with a punishment-free surface guaranteed for five years.

A similar warranty (but for a surface costing $3,000 more) comes from Omnicourt and the brothers Tomarin . . . Seymour and Larry Tomarin.

Seymour, of St. Catherines, Ontario, developed Omnicourt, the sand-filled synthetic grass that could become to hard ground what Adidas was to feet. Larry, of Los Angeles, is heading Omnicourt sales in the Western states.

Four years of marketing have seen about 3,000 Omnicourts installed worldwide. Australians, devotees of lawn tennis, have accepted the surface. It has been used for Davis Cup play. Next year’s World University Games tennis competition in Kobe, Japan, will be played on Omnicourt. Tennis clubs headed by Ken Rosewall, John Newcombe and Fred Stolle have installed the surface.

And there’s an Omnicourt toupee atop the Northrop Corp. building in Century City.

“We have tried to come up to a more natural, carpeted surface that plays fast like concrete and grass or slow like clay . . . yet is enjoyable to play on, with a true bounce and easy on the legs,” explained Seymour Tomarin. “Sales say we’ve done it.”

Uses Fine Sand

The synthetic grass is one inch long and made from polypropylene fibers. The top dressing, as with putting greens, is a fine sand. Depending on the desired court speed, up to 18 tons of sand are used.

Natural? “Designed the same as Mother Nature,” added Tomarin. “As each blade of real grass is surrounded by earth, we have each blade of synthetic grass surrounded by sand.”

Versatile? “It is used by Queens Park Rangers soccer club in England and the University of Oregon at Autzen Stadium.”

Maintenance? “Nothing beyond periodic brushing.”

Soft? “Ankle and knee injuries to soccer players have been reduced 70%.”

And although it doesn’t rain in Southern California, how about drainage? “Your (racket) strings will unravel long before your feet get wet.”

Three years ago, James Talman of Canyon Country installed a clay court at his home. It cost $20,000 to satisfy Talman’s sense of the traditional to say nothing of his sense of caution for legs that will never get any younger.

He remains happy with the surface . . . even if maintenance does include a daily watering from timed sprinklers.

Not so joyful was the Malibu man who also built a clay court.

He neglected moisture levels. Then he went away on a trip. When he returned, his $20,000 court had dried out and blown away.