on the grand central tennis court

shitpost about the experience through diagrams

0.5x pov of the court

9 pm last night, after some nicely seared steaks, my brother and I played tennis at the Vanderbilt Tennis Club court in Grand Central Terminal. This court is one indoor court in this train station, it’s on the fourth floor, and it’s most affordably reserved on weekdays after 10 pm and weekends after 9 pm (I believe).

The architecture surrounding the court reminiscent of Beaux-Art style, the acoustics enhanced the bounce of the ball, the setting in Midtown was bustlin’.

After rallying for a while, I could not wait to get off the court though and write this post. Because – the court had one major design flaw.

This is an illustration of an outdoor tennis court. The ball can travel high and low, anywhere in the open air.

This is an outdoor tennis court. The ball is free to travel low, high, wherever.

Here is a sample indoor court. There’s usually a high ceiling and some mesh net to create a divide between courts.

This is an indoor court. There’s usually a high ceiling.

This is the Grand Central court – there’s a high ceiling and a lowered ceiling part of the court. The ceiling lowers starting at about 9 feet behind the baseline. I measured by laying down perpendicular to the baseline and approximating the rest.

This is the Grand Central court - there’s a high ceiling and a low ceiling part of the court.

Here’s a sample rally between Player 1 (P1) and Player 2 (P2). They are probably hitting the ball relatively flat here.

We can see the design flaw start to show up here. If P1 were to really lob, or more realistically shank it really bad, then the ball would hit the ceiling and its trajectory would be interfered with. This court design flaw isn’t unique to this court, it’s just an issue with the indoor court, and it’s an edge case for lobbers and shankers.

Here we see P1 hitting a nice shot with HEAVY topspin, and P2 can decide to play aggressively and move forward and hit their shot in no man’s land, or else, they actually cannot return this ball. The ball will bounce high and hit the low ceiling!! Bad design!

Let’s say the previous illustration was just a bit exaggerated. There’s one more case. P1 hits a nice shot with heavy topspin, P2 moves deeper behind the baseline underneath the lower ceiling section of the court and returns the shot with equal or more topspin. There is a chance that the ball will hit the lowered ceiling on its way up…design 1.5/5.

For reference, this is how low the ceiling gets.

Low ceiling bordering the tennis court.

The aesthetics-usability effect is probably in play because overall, I really enjoyed the experience, and I will be back on another Saturday night. :-)