Sports Management Issue 1 2012 - Leisure Opportunities

TENNIS
CASE STUDY
TENNIS PARK, MOSCOW
F
our double, indoor courts at the
Tennis Park in Moscow, Russia, installed
by Concept 90, have been
awarded Two-Star ITF Recognition.
Concept 90 is an active member of
the International Tennis foundation
(ITF) and the Russian Tennis Federation
(RTF). Investing into continuous
tennis surface research and development,
the company has developed
court surfaces that offer players a
good standard of play with a minimum
chance of injury.
These indoor and outdoor surfaces
are suitable for tournament, training
and recreational use and include
acrylic RuKort, PVC RuKort, artificial
turf RuKortGrass and red artificial turf
RuKortXClay, which is an imitation of
clay court and RuKortTenisit.
The surface installed at the Tennis
Park in Moscow is RukortTour, a
hard, acrylic surface on 55mm rubber
matting. It is ITF certified and used
for tennis tournaments across Russia,
Croatia and Kazakhstan.
The company designed, built and
installed a 138m x 37.5m air hall encompassing
10 courts (four double
and six single). The air structure took
25 days to build and the tennis surfacing
15 days. Part of this process
involved adjusting the dimensions
and marking some of the standardsized
courts to allow for children’s
Above: The Tennis Park offers children’s
tennis lessons and tournaments. Right:
The court testing process took a team of
ITF technicians two days to complete
competitions within the facility, in accordance
with ITF Tennis 10s rules.
Upon completion, the four double court
surfaces received ITF Two-Star Recognition
after a testing process that took two days.
This process involved a team of ITF technicians
who visually checked that the court
surfaces were uniform, free of gaps and
cracks and that there was no deviation of
evenness, slope and planarity. Tests were
also conducted at key spots across the
courts and ball pace was measured.
The Tennis Park markets these courts
for use by children, young adults and disabled
players. As well as hosting tennis
coaching sessions and fun activities, the
facility operator also organises regular
tennis tournaments for young players.
These include the All Russia Tennis
Tournament, which involves 120 players
aged between nine and 12 years
old and a monthly Tennis 10s tournament
for six- to seven-year-olds. An
Amateur tennis tournament and the
Russia Cup is also hosted at the facility.
Using its links with the Russian Tennis
Federation, the Tennis Park is currently
planning a children’s tennis camp at
Tennis Centre Makarska in Croatia.
The ITF charges a US$500 (£391) administration
fee to add a facility (any number
of courts at the same location) that
meets the relevant specifications to the
official ITF Recognition list. The cost of
testing is determined by the laboratory
and is available on application.
FACILITIES GUIDE
AND DIRECTORY
The ITF has established a working group
of facilities experts from major tennisplaying
nations to design and develop
an international Facilities Guide, which
represents ‘best practice’ from around
the world. It’s a simple reference for
The position of the court markings
and net are checked to ensure
that they are within tolerance
those wanting to build a tennis court and
offers information about layout design
and choosing and maintaining surfaces:
www.itftennis.com/technical/facilities
The Suppliers’ Directory allows users
to search for tennis facility products and
services and identify ITF-Recognised suppliers:
http://tds.itftennis.com
For more information, please email
technical@itftennis.com or visit the ITF
website: www.itftennis.com l
* US$30bn (£18.9bn) is a ballpark figure
produced from an estimate of 750,000
courts worldwide at an average cost of
US$40,000 (£25,000) per court. The number
of courts is based on a survey of the
ITF member nations in 2004/2005.
Jamie Capel-Davies is science and
technical manager at the ITF
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Issue 1 2012 © cybertrek 2012