OmniCourt update

We had our first subcommittee meeting on resurfacing omnicourts 1-4 on 28th May.

I prepared some background information for the committee :

History

•8 PSC grass Courts were converted to “omni” more than 20 years ago , and they last approximately 7 years
•Omnicourt is a brand name for Sports Technology International, which seems to have lost popularity
•Last resurfacing was done when I was around in 2001 and the material used was “Wimbledon Unreal Grass”
•Wimbledon is a brand name for Grassman Australia
•Grassman is probably the biggest and most popular seller world wide and is installed in Lleyton Hewett and Serena Williams homes
•Previous resurfacing was done by Tennis Court Builders (M) and they represent Grassman here in Malaysia

Alternatives

•Wimbledon Unreal Grass is a 19 mm Polypropylene carpet, in-filled with fine sand
•Initial enquiry to Tennis Court Builders indicated a significant price increase from 45K per court to almost 75K (and a change to Grassman Top Flight 19 product) , hence the 300K request at the AGM
•Competitor from New Zealand (Tiger Turf) has very similar/identical product at much lower cost per court represented by Olympic Venture here in Malaysia
•Some carpets are also being manufactured by vendors in China now, but quality is suspect
•Some vendors are also promoting alternative materials such as Polyethylene.
•Most major vendors have adopted “integrated lines” to improve wear performance

Polypropylene vs Polyethylene

•Existing is polypro (wimbledon unreal grass )
•Polypropylene has highest UV resistance
•Polypropylene has better resistance to stress breaking (often used as plastic hinges)
•Polyethylene feels nice, because it has very low surface friction
•Many hockey pitches are switching from PP to PE, because they like the way they can slide with little or no watering

Conclusions

•I feel that it would be unwise to change from a known good surface (Polypropylene) to an unknown untested surface (Polyethylene)
•China vendors are unacceptable.
•While we have good previous experience with tennis court builders, the cost is too high and we must seriously consider alternative
•Specifications appear identical (we have received side-by-side specs and they appear almost identical in all respects), so we can request for fresh quotes from these two vendors.
•We’ll specify that the vendors must include sending a factory rep from overseas to supervise installation (as was the case back in 2001)
•Also I recommend we replace all the net posts and do so in such a way that they are installed in sleeves in the ground, so that the posts become replaceable in the event of damage or crank malfunction.

The committee agreed with these recommendations and we are in process of requesting a fresh round of quotes to select the vendor (note that in this blog, i have removed competitor's pricing information until the second round of quotes is complete, since we want to keep the bidding process honest)

Ipoh Swimming Club

After training so hard for Raintree, we were still pretty geared up when we travelled to Ipoh to play against the Ipoh Swimming Club....

our Japanese players were off playing golf..but we had quite a strong team , with Ooi Soon Hong as our Captain of the Day...

Several of us went down the day before to enjoy good Ipoh food....Koay had us eating chicken at 6:30pm and fixing main dinner for 7:30! We also had a couple of birthday boys, including our Captain of Day that we had to celebrate a bit the nite before as well

We all enjoyed the good food and next day the team assembled at the club.... Unfortunately for the Ipoh Swimming Club we were pretty hungry for a win and we won all our matches for a combined score of 10 - 0, including a few kosongs! One of which was delivered by Loo Choo Teng and the big chicken eater, Koay Theam Hock!

raintree knockout stage

We sailed thru the quarterfinals and banged up against lakeview club in the semifinals... we knew that would be a tough match and we weren't wrong... we got the first point after our young men otto and jin ghee settled down after taking the first set to a tie break...but Lisa and machiko never settled down and we fell back to 1 1 ...

Albert and Robert had no problem adding another point, to make it 2 1 but we never recovered from the loss of the ladies doubles... in the end we lost to lakeview 3 2 after a hard fight...

The 3rd and 4th placing was no problem and we took the 3rd place 4 1 against sagamat...

Raintree overwhelmed Lake View in the final... easily winning their veterans, mens' 30+ and mixed doubles... also their men's 45 with Suresh Menon was "no see ball"...

All in all it was a great tournament , good teamwork and good fun.... and one great thing about tennis is "I win , I learn something... you win against me, I also learn something"... so we'll be back next year more determined than ever ...

Raintree round robin finished

We fought the second round of the round robin against Taiping CRC. Lisa struggled with a bout of nerves and discomfort with the indoor lighting but she and Machiko overcame that to come from behind and win 8 6. Otto and Jin Ghee continued to cruise thru their matches winning 8 1. Mr. and Mrs. Sasaki clenched it for us by tormenting their opponents 8 3. Robert and Albert took their time to close out their match 8 5. We gave our 45s a rest and sent down substitute pair for a friendly since we had already won the round ...

Next up, we'll be meeting Johore Country Club in the quarterfinal at 4PM... up to this point, Johore has not had enough ladies and has been giving walkovers for the ladies doubles.... so most likely we'll start the Quarterfinals with one match in the pocket.

Assuming we make it past Johore, then our most likely opponent looks like Lakeview in the semi-final at 830 in the morning on Sunday...

Raintree round one

PSC won the first round of the round robin against Raintree's B team (Dragons) 5- 0 . The info we got on the balls for the tournament was wrong...they are actually using Wilson Australian Open Balls... luckily those balls seem to suit our players better....and we cruised thru the first round with the following results:

Lisa and Mei Aie won 8 -2

Robert and Albert won 8 -5

Jin Ghee and Otto won 8 -1

Mr and Mrs Sasaki won 8 -2

Chua and Soon Hong won 8 -5

after the match we went for some good steaks at a hawker center near Flamingo hotel... very nice tenderloins and ribeyes... ho ciak !

Saturday we play against Taiping CRC around 12 noon... assuming we make it thru that, we'll play the quarterfinal about 4pm...

Omni Court update

We are planning to replace the omni turf on courts 1 thru 4 this year. At the last Club AGM, a resolution approving the spending of not more than RM300K was passed, and the tennis committee was instructed to form an adhoc committee together with members of the General committee to evaluate the various proposals and conduct a fresh tender exercise to select the vendor and materials.

Typically the courts are expected to last about 7 years and courts 1 thru 4 were indeed last replaced back in 2001. The materials used at that time were 19 mm Wimbledon Unreal Grass (a brand name of product manufactured by Grassman in Australia.

We think the Omni court vendor and the materials have remained the same for at least 14 years and possibly longer. There have been some business changes in the Wimbedon brand and now the vendor is proposing Grassman TOP FLIGHT 19 which seems to be identical and probably is since Wimbledon was OEMed by Grassman.

However the cost has increased from about RM45K per court that we paid back in 2001 to about RM75K (thus the 300K spending request approved at the AGM)

We have also received quotes for a competitor's product which in many respects is very similar and comes from New Zealand. The company is called Tiger Turf. They have a 19mm product called Tournament 1000 which appears to be almost identical to Top Flight 19 and is substantially cheaper.

The other technical item of interest is that since the courts were last replaced, both of these manufacturers have introduced what is known as "integrated" lines. That is to say that previously , the lines were "cut-in" using long strips of 2" wide materials to form the baselines and tram lines. They literally sliced open the carpet with a knife and inserted long strips of yellow material to form the lines. Now the baselines and tramlines are woven into the appropriate sections of carpet so as to reduce tearing (which is where we are currently having the most problems with our courts). The service lines are still cut-in but we have few problems there.

We'll be evaluating all this and making some proposals soon. Our intention is to replace the carpets with materials that provide the same feel and comfort that our members have grown to appreciate over the years and we hope we can do so at a reasonable cost.

Raintree Draw

The draw for Raintree has been done... There are 12 teams, so there are 4 groups of 3 in the roundrobin stage... We just play two matches before the quarterfinal... PSC will be meeting Raintree's B team in the first match at 6pm on this friday , 16 may 2008... If you're down in KL this weekend, come and support the team!

Poker Tennis

We organized our first "Fun Tennis " event , which I called "Poker Tennis"... on Sunday morning 4 May 2008... The response was quite good... we had a LOT of japanese members who were very eager to play...

Lisa has much better handwriting than me. She was kind enough to write the rules up on the board... here's how it works:

We were lucky to have exactly the right number of men and ladies so that we could fix the pairing as all mixed doubles... after each round, the players came out of the court and drew cards... then the players changed to new partners and continued on another round.

We played from about 9 in the morning until 11 am and by that time, everyone was feeling the heat a bit so we retired to the bistro for a bit of makan and some cold Guiness Draft!

We awarded the prizes for the best poker hands that the players could make. Lim Koon Seng was leading all the way, having secured a full house on his first 5 cards... However Li Siok caught him on the last card with a higher full house... Soon Hong came in 3rd with 3 of a kind... Harumi, Patsy and Josephine all came in with two pair ... but everyone got a prize... compliments of Tan Kok Pooh, who generously donated the playing cards ...

The best prize was a huge box of a dozen decks of cards, which was for the bottom Champion...who turned out to be Dr. Alif ... whose hand was a One-Eyed-Jack High... Dr. Alif had to go for his rounds and couldn't make it for the lunch... but his prize was eagerly taken up by our currently "One-Eyed-Jack" Captain, Mr. Loo Choo Teng!

It was great fun and we hope to organize another round (Kok Pooh gave us a LOT of cards)... Maybe next round will be in the evening...but in any case you better sign up early if you want to play... The response should be very good next time and there's only so many pairs we can handle for an event like this... Thanks again to all the participants, supporters, donors, tennis committee members, groundsmen, and club staff that helped make the event a success....

Training for Raintree

Raintree masters invitational starts on Friday 16 May and ends on Sunday 18 May... As its a hard court tournament we've started training the PSC team on Tuesdays Thursdays and Saturdays 5-7pm.


The ball for this tournament is a Wilson "US Open" model... We've acquired enough cans to use 2 cans per training session. They seem to wear out pretty fast... the felt is in bad shape after one hours and more or less finished after the second hour..