No longer limited to summer barbecues and swimming pools, back-yard entertainment is sporting a whole new look these days.
Installing amenities that range from basketball and tennis courts to putting greens, more and more people are showing that they’ve got style as well as game. And while the price of some specialty athletic courts can reach skyward to $40,000, those who have purchased the back-yard additions say it’s worth the roughing on the bank account.
DFW Putting Greens in North Texas has been installing greens in back yards around the Ft. Worth-Dallas area since 1998. Under its parent company, United Turf Industries, based in Wichita, Kan., DFW Putting Greens features the SofTrak system, which grooms rounded quartz silica sand into the turf.
“The ball settles the same way it does on a golf green at a golf course,” says Jeff Wall of Colleyville. His son, Jonathan, 17, is a member of the American Junior Golf Association and co-captain of his high-school golf team, and Wall says he saw the thousands of dollars he laid out for his sloping, two-tiered putting green as an investment in his son’s future as a professional golfer.
“I thought it would be a great way for Jonathan to improve his putting and chipping skills,” Wall says. “Rather than having him go to the golf course, whenever he gets in the mood he can just walk out in the back, take a wedge and chip to the green.”
Ron Hambrick, owner of DFW Putting Greens, says that although he has installed the synthetic putting greens at bed-and-breakfasts and condo complexes, most of his business comes from homeowners looking to enhance not only their short game but also the landscape aesthetics of their back yards.
“The popularity of this application is just exploding. People do not want to spend a lot of time on their back yards” with work such as gardening and mowing, Hambrick says.
Lush green in color and ultraviolet-light resistant, the putting greens require virtually no maintenance, which is a key selling factor for many people.
“You just blow the leaves and debris off with a blower and brush it” a few times a year, says Kent Davis of North Richland Hills.
It’s been almost two years since Davis and his family bought their rectangular putting green, which is about 12 feet wide and 30 feet long. Providing countless hours of fun and enjoyment for family and friends, the miniature link has definitely been worth the more than $5,000 he spent on it, says Davis.
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Built on a slope, the Davises’ putting green has a tree in its center, and is equipped with breaks and undulations, translating into some fierce rounds of putting and chipping.
“There’s a sand base and then a turf on top of it,” he says. “If you go to a Putt-Putt, that’s just concrete with a carpet put on top of it. This will actually hold the shots.”
It’s been 2 1/2 years since Nicole Curtis of Flower Mound and her family had their Sport Court Game Court installed, complete with a basketball hoop and a “rebounder,” which returns any type of ball, allowing them plenty of time to work on their backhands. The Game Court, which is about one-third the size of a regulation tennis court, is designed for 15 to 20 different games, including volleyball and roller hockey.
Graduates of Texas Christian University, Curtis and her husband, Chris, had “TCU” spelled out in block tile letters on the court, with white lines indicating the short-court tennis boundaries and purple lines drawing their half-court basketball layout.
While the courts are designed for primary sports, Nicole Curtis says her family has found other ways to enjoy their high-end blacktop, which cost several thousand dollars.
“We use it as a party platform, with Christmas lights all over it. It’s very multipurpose,” she said, adding that maintenance of the court has been minimal, as the courts are made of interlocking tiles designed to withstand blistering, peeling and cracking.
Despite the weakened economy, Mark Kundysek, president of Sport Court in North Texas, said sales of the courts increased in 2001.
“I really think the No. 1 reason that families are putting these courts in the back yard is safety and knowing where your children are,” he says.
The court’s surfacing is made of a high-impact polypropylene copolymer, which Kundysek says is comparable to plastic, and each tile has more than 600 cone-shaped legs underneath.
“These legs are what suspends people off of that hard concrete,” he said, reducing the amount of stress the body may experience on other surfaces.
Curtis has a 5-year-old daughter and 2-year-old triplets, and she says the suspension feature provides peace of mind when her kids are playing on the court. “I feel better when the kids fall down on this than the other,” she says. “They don’t get the scraped-up knees and stuff. It’s been worth every penny.”
And for specialty courts like these, it takes a whole lot of pennies. Athletic courts by Salt Lake City-based Sport Court range from $8,000 for a half-court basketball court to $40,000 for a full-size regulation tennis court. The size of the court and the options selected determine the final price. The luxury of putting by the patio runs about $15 per square foot through DFW Putting Greens, with the desired size of the putting green determining the overall cost.
But whether the yard is a few hundred square feet or several acres, Hambrick and Kundysek agree that leisurely pastimes and court-oriented sports can flourish in any setting.
“You don’t have to have a lot of real estate to have a recreational facility,” Kundysek said.