Court Care and Safety on Court
If we can get a few successive days of dry weather, we will have Courts 3 and 4 available with Court 8 to follow. It’s therefore an appropriate time to give some general information on this and all the other courts. 

Having two different surfaces at the club is great and something we think is important at an eight court club. However, the surfaces are quite different and the level of grip is not the same.  As a summary:

Poraflex
Wear the appropriate shoes – tennis shoes only (no astro shoes, non marking  etc!)
Clean shoes only – avoid getting infill onto these courts – clean shoes before going onto court
Preferred surface for ball machine use [Excessive infill i.e. “clay” on the Poraflex courts will reduce drainage – the surface is perforated, as well as acting as an abrasive reducing the lifetime of the painted surface]
Artificial Clay Courts
Wear the appropriate shoes with enough grip – consider specific clay court shoes
Water the courts if dry (a watering system is available for this purpose)
Drag the courts after play (from the outside in)
Sweep the lines

To allow access to as many members as possible to the new courts we are going to expand the booking system to allow general booking of Courts 4,5,6,7 and 8. This therefore covers 3 artificial clay courts and 2 of the Poraflex courts. We’ll run this as a trial so if you have any comments positive or negative please let us know.

We are hoping to make Court 8 the long term ‘home’ for the ball machine - if we can arrange appropriate secure storage. This should lead to less maintenance costs (the clay infill is quite brutal on the mechanics) and also allow easy access to the court.