June, 1917 
TENNIS 
COURTS 
55 
FOR SENSIBLE SERVICE 
A downward slope from 
one side of the court may 
remedy drainage troubles 
The backstop can be 
made attractive as well as 
utilitarian by planting 
Another plan is to make 
the backstop an archi- 
tectUral feature 
C AST back in imagination, i£ you 
will, to Arthurian days in Merrie 
England. 
On the greensward behind a feudal 
castle a strange scene is being enacted. 
Regal ladies in girdled brocades are 
wildly applauding two knights in armor 
who cavort clankily on either side of a 
bank of earth that stretches between a 
bastion on the one hand and a lance 
stuck upright in the ground on the 
other. With his mailed fist each strikes 
at a ball, striving to hit it to the far 
side of the barrier where his opponent 
cannot reach it in time for a return. 
From within the closed visors of the 
two knights come sepulchral mutterings. 
“Forty-fif. — forty-thirty — deuce!— 
’vantage in”—or whatever were the 
Arthurian equivalents of these stirring 
ejaculations of the courts. 
Yes, they are trying to play tennis. 
Those were indeed the days of real 
sport, from hawking to hunting the 
Holy Grail. Of a truth there were 
giants in those days, as there must 
have been to wear armor through a 
hot five-set match—if they ever did. 
And from then to now tennis has been 
known and played, a proof, if any 
were needed, of its worth as a game 
of wide appeal and undying popularity. 
To be sure, the modern game is so widely 
different from that played by the nobles of King 
Arthur’s and other courts that a casual observer 
would hardly recognize it. In two respects, how¬ 
ever, a similarity can be clearly traced: in both 
games there were more or less smooth and regu¬ 
lar playing surfaces, and in both a division— 
earth mound or net—separated the opponents’ 
territories. Obviously, tennis cannot be played 
without a tennis court, and so we come without 
further preamble to the subject of the present 
article, the making of a sensible playing ground. 
The Location 
The first consideration in making a tennis court 
is the location. A space 60’ x 120' will be re¬ 
quired, the latter dimension running north and 
south so that the game can be played at any 
time of day without undue sunlight shining in 
the eyes of any of the contestants. A site nat- 
