TENNIS


There is no greater feeling for us, than to come to work


everyday and see people, having had to be isolated for so long, now able to come together to safely enjoy sport again


site. In truth this had been a job we started through the winter, when the poor weather limited what we could do with our natural surfaces. Whilst our main walkways tend to stay relatively clean, owing to the foot traffic, the further reaches of our car parks, and some of the lesser used walkways were beginning to look less than desirable. The period of closure allowed us to finish the cleaning of these areas, and also to top up the sand brushed into the block paving. Throughout the early weeks of the lockdown, we were mindful of capturing all the work that was going on around the site. There was going to be a big change in the look of vast areas of the site between the time of the lockdown starting, and when members were able to return. We even took this a step further, after a suggestion from the Chairman of the club, and started putting grounds update videos out through YouTube (you can find our channel by searching for Edgbaston Priory Grounds). This offered us a way to engage with our members remotely, and we took this one step further when, at the suggestion of a colleague, we put together a series of lawn care advice videos for our members to work their way through during the lockdown. Despite all of this, we still had our sights on delivering a grass court season in 2020. As we headed into early May, we were becoming increasingly optimistic that some restrictions might be eased, and so we started to assess where we were with our grass courts. The renovations we


had completed were growing in well, with swards thickening and courts catching up to where they should be for the time of year. However, our biggest challenge was not having the use of the tournament rain covers.


Whilst we had the covers brought to site, and we may have installed them ourselves if push had come to shove in the run up to the tournament, without the temporary staff we take on to operate the covers in the build up to and during the Birmingham Classic, it would be impractical to install and use the covers. Our three practice courts are impossible to operate without temporary staff, and whilst the five match courts can be used by our full-time team of six people, it would take us most of a day to put the covers on or off with such small numbers. The biggest problem not having the covers presents isn’t an obvious one. Most people would assume that the issue would be that when it rains, we can’t keep the courts dry. In fact, the problem is that we can’t keep the courts wet, at least not in the way we normally would. In a normal year, we use our rain covers to help consolidate the soil profile. We use the covers, left flat on the surface, to pull moisture up from deeper in the profile, a little bit like a roller will do. This means that we are able to consolidate the surface evenly at a depth, which creates a strong soil profile which offers good, even bounce during play.


However, being able to leave a cover flat, also allows us to trap moisture in


Our fear was that if we allowed the site to be


anything less than what our members have come to


expect, this could potentially have a negative impact on membership numbers


98


PC June/July 2020


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