SportsField Management August 2026 | Page 17

SPORTING GROUNDS

Photo provided by Germantown Cricket Club

By John Kmitta

lthough the focus of the sports field management profession is often centered on the playing surfaces for football, baseball, soccer and softball, highly skilled sports field managers are caring for grass tennis courts at some of the most historic clubs in the United States. In doing so, they are utilizing a unique skill set to maintain turfgrass under challenging conditions.

“ It’ s not that one needs golf and or sports turf knowledge specifically. We fit so perfectly in the middle,” said Alan-Michael Turner, assistant director of grounds at Longwood Cricket Club in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.“ There are plenty of things from a putting green management aspect that we can apply to maintain our courts, such as cultivation and fertilizing, spoon feeding with foliar, and our fungicide management program.”

Photo provided by Germantown Cricket Club

According to Turner, the key to managing grass tennis courts is understanding that it ' s very similar to golf, but the intensity of the traffic is also six to 10 times greater than what a professional football field would see.

“ I can ' t just put out as much water as I need to flush through the system, I can ' t get on the surface immediately after rainfall, and I can ' t allow play during rain,” he said.“ And we don ' t have a week-long break between games. As soon as play ends at sundown, I have from sundown to 10 a. m. the next day for that plant to be ready to receive more traffic. So the tools in the bag to achieve that are more rounded.”

Said Tim Fleming, director of grounds at Germantown Cricket Club in Philadelphia.“ We ' re taking care of what is basically a combination of a golf green versus a fairway, somewhere in between. My height of cut is about 1 / 2 inch right now. So, you ' re basically taking care of it like you would a fairway or a golf green.”

Photo provided by Longwood Cricket Club

Both Turner and Fleming manage facilities with long and storied histories.

Longwood Cricket Club was founded in 1877, and was one of the earliest clubs in the United States to feature grass tennis courts. Longwood hosted the inaugural Davis Cup in 1900 between Great Britan and the United States, and went on to host 14 more Davis Cup tournaments until 1999. The club also hosted the U. S. Pro Tennis Championships from 1964 until 1999; and in 1997 the club hosted the Federation Cup, the premier international team competition in women’ s tennis, between the U. S. and Japan. Despite its early roots in the sport of cricket, Longwood Cricket Club ceased hosting cricket matches in 2007.

Longwood is currently home to 25 natural grass courts, most of which are Poa annua and bentgrass mix, and three of which are perennial ryegrass. The facility also has 19 Har-Tru clay tennis quarts, all with overhead irrigation.

“ We are set on a 10-acre property,” said Turner.“ The grass courts take up about four acres, and the clay courts take up about another two-and-a-half to three acres. The remaining is clubhouse, pool, and landscaped garden areas.”

Photo provided by Germantown Cricket Club

Germantown Cricket Club, meanwhile, is the nation ' s second oldest cricket club— founded in 1854.

“ We were around during the height of cricket popularity in the United States, which peaked after the Civil War,” said Fleming.“ Around the turn of the century, tennis started taking over, and by the time we got on the current property in 1902 everything started transitioning to tennis.”

In the 1920s, Germantown hosted the precursor to the U. S. Open, and in 1987, the club became a National Historic Landmark. Cricket is still played at Germantown Cricket Club during the spring and fall, but uses the same playing surface that is used for the grass tennis courts, which are 100 % perennial ryegrass.

“ Our tennis courts are our cricket field as well, so we have to take down all the tennis courts, remove all the dividers between them and to set up a cricket field,” said Fleming.

Germantown Cricket Club is currently home to 41 tennis courts, four pickleball courts, three padel courts, seven squash courts, bowling alleys and two pools.

Photo provided by Longwood Cricket Club

It is, of course, a team effort for both of these facilities to maintain so many playing surfaces.

According to Turner, the grounds team at Longwood consists of 18 to 20 people, with a mix of full- and part-time staff.

“ We are strictly a seasonal club, so we start with the crew the second week in March to get all the clay ready,” he said.“ Grass courts typically open sometime mid to late May, and then we close the first week in November. We ' ll work up until the week before Thanksgiving, and then there are no duties on property during the winter.”

Fleming oversees the entire outside property at Germantown Cricket Club, as well as the indoor tennis courts. His team includes an assistant and 10 other crew members.

“ We mow the courts a minimum of three times a week— usually Monday, Wednesday and Friday,” said Fleming.“ We don ' t really have time to mow them on the weekends because the courts are packed all weekend long. If we have to fit in a weekend mowing due to excessive growth, we mow half of the courts on Saturday, and the other half on Sunday morning.

Photo provided by Longwood Cricket Club

“ We spoon feed fertilize every two weeks, along with preventative fungicides or anything that we need to put down,” he added.“ We try to do everything preventatively if possible so we don ' t have any outbreaks. We ' re in a transition zone and it was not the greatest winter and not the greatest spring. Grow-in wasn ' t as great as I would have liked for early spring.”

According to Turner, the main maintenance days at Longwood are also Monday, Wednesday and Friday— weather permitting— during which his crew is mowing, marking, and sometimes rolling. The grass courts are mowed four to five times a week at 0.325”( approximately 8 millimeters).

“ We do a lot of supplemental hand watering, so the most involved aspect of the job is checking moisture to make sure it ' s uniform off of all the courts that each court is similar to one another and they play consistently,” he said.“ The main thing that we have to be conscious of is safety, because if the grass surface is wet at all, that poses a safety risk. We don ' t allow grass tennis shoes at the club. It ' s clay only shoes in order to limit traffic and damage to the courts.”

Photo provided by Longwood Cricket Club

“ Traffic is the biggest challenge,” said Fleming.“ It really comes down to rest, and trying

to do as much as we can agronomically. I will rest them as much as I can during the week, and rotate them around as much as possible. The way we have them staggered, they ' ll share the doubles alleys, but we have enough space and we drill two sets of post holes so we can actually shift them side to side. The alleys will always be in play, but not the middle of the court. We shift them about every two weeks to give it more time to grow back in and heal. We try to preserve them as long as we possibly can.”

At Longwood, Turner and his team manage traffic by opening certain courts earlier in the day than others. Longwood’ s courts see more evening traffic with the after-work crowd constituting its largest number of players.

“ Play in the morning in spring is mainly ladies spring league and retirees,” he said.“ That carries over into the summer and ebbs and flows with summer camp for the junior program. The clay is the heaviest used in the early part of the day. On most days we will fill at least 75 % of our courts by 9 a. m., and people will transition from matches on clay and move to the grass when it ' s available.”

According to Turner, the courts at Longwood will see anywhere from 4 to 15 hours of play per day, without many opportunities for prolonged rest.

Photo provided by Germantown Cricket Club

“ The biggest challenge other than traffic is pretty much anything that attacks Poa annua," he said. " We are always battling disease, annual bluegrass weevils, the humidity, and higher UV levels. We saw our first back-to-back 100-degree days since 1944. That makes it even harder to keep the grass alive because the Poa just naturally wants to die in that type of weather.”

Turner said he and his crew are always trying to find new chemistries or new cultural practices to help the plant push through those stressful periods.

“ Court hardness is always in flux too,” he added.“ We have a higher clay content in our soil as well— it’ s anywhere between 8 and 10 percent. So the shrinking and swelling of the soil causes more drastic changes within the surface hardness. We’ re always looking for different ways to be able to improve that and to be able to get courts open in a faster time frame, both after rain and after morning maintenance.”

Fleming has the added challenge of transitioning the grass tennis courts at Germantown into a cricket field.

“ We have to remove all the posts and nets in the field,” he said.“ We usually put covers over top of the holes, especially if they ' re going to transition back to tennis courts for some reason. If that ' s the case, we ' ll cover the post holes and not fill them in. But if it ' s the end of the tennis season, we ' ll just fill the post holes in. For the cricket pitch area, which gets the most traffic, we use a cricket pad to help with the wear. We still get wear on the ends of the mat, but it helps.”

Photo provided by Longwood Cricket Club

“ I never stop learning,” Fleming added.“ I think it ' s important to learn something new every day. For example, now we are using robotic turf line painting. That is something that has made my job easier, and the lines are nice and straight.”

Turner said the biggest lessons he has learned involve different ways to water and the differences between watering clay courts versus grass courts.

“ We kind of jokingly say you can ' t kill the clay,” he said.“ You can overwater it and it gets soft, but at the end of the day, it ' s going to drain off or you can brush it and repair it to become playable. You can always add more water. But when the grass becomes too waterlogged, you can ' t take it away because the damage is done.”

Being more conservative can help the plant be more wear tolerant because it ' s not as fat and succulent, especially in more humid conditions, he added.

Both Fleming and Turner point to interaction with club members as being their favorite part of the job.

“ It’ s about getting that satisfaction out of seeing a pristine property and pristine tennis courts and people enjoying using them,” said Fleming.“ I think that ' s the key. On some Saturday mornings, every court here is full. If they ' re all playing doubles, it could be close to 100 people out there.”

Said Turner,“ The main reason I ' ve been at Longwood for as long as I have is that it ' s a unique way to interact with a membership. We have a lot of face-to-face interaction with the membership because we ' re such a tight property. People are always asking questions. We see a lot more of the repetitive clientele day after day. A lot of people don ' t see what we do every day because they show up and the courts are ready. But when certain members ask questions, they realize the extent that we go through to make the court playable.”

Added Turner,“ My predecessor, Mike Buras, would always say‘ You need to plan, but don ' t make plans; because if you make plans, inevitably the plans are going to change, and then you ' re not going to have a backup.’”

“ Every day is very different here,” said Turner.“ I come in every afternoon and have a little debrief and we have a plan for the next morning. I can almost guarantee you part of that is going to change when I walk through the door the next morning. So being able to adapt is the number-one factor for us.”