Court resurfacing update

Dismantling of courts 1 -4 started on 25 August. By 31 August, we were ready for checking the flatness of the slabs. We estimate that the slabs were poured about 25 years ago and I was a bit worried about their condition. First thing we want to do is check for any low spots where water will form ponds when it rains...

We instructed the supplier to conduct flatness testing with strings by putting nails at 2 meter intervals along the edges of the court and stretching strings across the court to form 2 X 2 meter grid pattern.



We then check the flatness along each of the 4 sides of each box of the resulting grid pattern.



So we check the gap between the string and we identify any areas with a 5 mm or more gap over a 2 Meter run.

The string test identified a few areas like the one above... and the vendor will repatch these areas and we'll run a final "live" ponding test by intentionally flooding the courts with water later in the week.

The slabs were in surprisingly good condition except that we found a few dozen "holes" about 1 inch in diameter scattered all over. We eventually identified these as places where wooden stakes were used to level the slabs during pouring back in the 80's . The wood has since rotted away, and rain running through the holes has created small voids of various depths. In the photo below, the vendor is checking the depth and extent of one of these holes... this one turned out to be over a foot deep and perhaps 6 inches in diameter. We won't hack these up, as that would do more damage than good... instead we'll fill them as best we can and seal them with concrete...

Work on all four courts is scheduled to finish by the end of October, but the vendor is well ahead of schedule and I think we may be able to play on them again by the end of September if we continue to have good weather...

PSC vs Lake Club

This match was part of an annual series for PSC vs Lake Club KL. We took a full strength team to KL , but the weather did not cooperate and after waiting for 2 hours, the match was eventually abandoned...

Court Resurfacing Update

Most of us refer to courts 1 - 8 as "Omnicourts", but that's actually a long forgotten brandname. The correct term for this type of court is Synthetic Turf. As previously mentioned, after much research and debate, the club has awarded the contract for resurfacing Courts 1 -4 to Tennis Court Builders, using Grassman Topflight 19 Synthetic Turf. The contract commenced on 28 July, 2008 and will be completed by 20 October. (12 weeks)

The new court carpets were manufactured to our specifications at the end of July and are currently being shipped from Australia to Malaysia. They are expected to arrive in the next week or two, so the current schedule has them shutting down courts 1 & 2 on 25 August to demolish the existing carpets and begin reconditioning the concrete base. Courts 3 & 4 will shut down shortly thereafter and it is expected that reconditioning (patching and filling the concrete) will be complete by 8 September.

It will then take a couple of weeks to lay the new carpets and in-fill them with sand. The contract schedule has a bit of slack in it at this point to allow for any bad weather , and thus the carpets are scheduled to finish laying on 06 October and sand in-filling is scheduled to complete by 20 October.

Its quite possible that if weather is good, they may finish well before this schedule, bearing in mind that the contract has significant penalties for the vendor if construction drags on beyond 06 October. Thus, the schedule provided by the vendor is pretty conservative.

It should be noted that these courts will be two tone, with a dark green interior and a light green exterior (it was felt that green fits in to the club surroundings better than blue)... and these courts will have "integrated" base lines (meaning the base lines are woven into the carpets) and the lines will be white, to improve contrast vs the yellow ball.

The Grassman TopFlight 19 is a "3rd generation" of synthetic turf. The materials used in the carpet represent the "state of the art" in synthetic court surfaces, and we expect them to provide a very suitable and long lasting surface to play on.

Also as Tennis Court Builders has previously successfully resurfaced the PSC courts several times before, we are very confident that they will once again do an excellent job of providing us a nice set of courts to play on for many years to come.

PSC vs Kelab Sungai Petani

I always approach our annual match against the SP club with mixed loyalties because in truth, the first club i joined in Malaysia was the SP club almost 20 years ago and I remain an absent member.... I always look forward to catching up with my old kaki's there and this year was no exception...

We travelled to Sungai Petani on 2 Aug. 2008 as part of a series of games. Our Captain of the Day was Koay Theam Hock.... This years line up was Tennis, Darts, Table Tennis, Badminton , and Hockey. Saturday is a working day in SP so their players were coming in a bit scattered... So our first pair to go down was KK "What do you call that?" Chee and Ooi Soon Hong ... They played a very entertaining match against two of the craftiest players in Kedah, Hang and Shamugam... our Chee had to run like hell to keep up with those foxes... Sham still showing some brilliant touch at the net... But in the end Chee and Soon Hong emerged on top.

Dr. Michael Oh boasted that he could "sure win" if he was allowed to partner Robin Cheah. In fact, he insisted he would buy one table if he failed to deliver the match. Our Captain readily agreed and offered to put them down as first doubles!!!! Michael immediately reconsidered and fixed his stake at "10 Stouts" and he and Robin went down as Third doubles...

They put up a good fight... and both Michael and Robin made some spectacular saves...but eventually went down 4 - 8... So it looks like someone will be enjoying 10 stouts at the club soon... or will it be 1 stout and 10 straws?

Our Japanese Players had all come early in the morning to play golf... A rather tired looking Toida partnered Loo Choo Teng against one father and son team and managed to defeat them.

The morning Golf didn't seem to bother Sasaki a bit and he and Annette ground their opponents down in no time.

Robert and Koay had no troubles in their match... nor did Lisa when she partnered Robert in the other mixed doubles.

Dr. Khushpal and I couldn't find our form and earn even a single break against our opponents and donated another point to SP...

In the end it was PSC 6 -2 KSP .... and the PSC won the series overall but as usual, no one talked much about the score during dinner where a good time was had by all.