Maurice Gardner gives us the secrets to what makes great courts… and that’s grass courts. Former Head Groundskeeper at Wessen Lawn Tennis Club in Pontiac, Michigan, Gardner takes us through a day in the life of a groundskeeper as well as the cost of the maintaining such a high standard of grass courts.

The cost of keeping grass courts appears to be often too high, and in the case it may have been too high for Wessen which went out of business after boasting itself to be the first grass court club built in the USA in over a century.

Gardner, who studied agronomy after working at Wessen, mentions that country clubs already have much of the equipment required for keeping the grass courts. “All you really need beside what the course superintendent has is a painter for the lines,” says Gardner.

Randy Walker hosts this week’s podcast here at BeyondTheBaselines.com and wonders if people will still want to play on grass, as grass courts are so elusive. “People travel to Newport” just to play on grass, says Walker. “Grass courts can add value to any club.” And he muses, throughout the podcast, if grass court play will grow once again in the United States. It’s a dream that, one never knows, might become a reality.