I've been a league player for years and I've played on all types of court surfaces... even badly cracked hard courts. But I never thought about whether or not the surfaces had to meet certain standards for league match play.
A couple of weekends ago, I was playing tennis with a couple of friends and one of their friends, "Betty", who was visiting from Florida. It was competitive but so much fun, and afterward, we went to La Madeleine for a nice lunch and some girl talk.
Well, tennis players can't keep from talking about the sport we love for long, and soon the talk turned to our leagues and court surfaces. Betty mentioned a team on one of her leagues that has home courts she described as Astroturf carpeting on cement with sand sprinkled on it... It's the dreaded synthetic turf. (I hate that surface!) When it's new, it looks and plays much like a grass court, but this, she said, needs to be replaced badly.
The surface of those courts was very uneven due to the "grass" blades being broken from much use, and there are also many spots that are completely worn through to the cement, and because the sand was all but gone, this gave the balls crazy and unexpected bounces. Betty also said that the home-team ladies all wore the appropriate grass-court shoes while she and her teammates only had regular shoes which caused them to slip and slide during play.
So, her question to me was if there was any USTA rule that governs acceptable court surfaces for league match play.
As it turns out, there is absolutely nothing in the rules of tennis or in the USTA league regulations that defines what is or isn't an allowable surface for a tennis court, even though the home team will have the advantage in cases like hers.
We can just be thankful that we don't play in India. Many courts there are made of compacted cow dung.
