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Tennis court surfaces

Posted by jkirk on 8 July 2019 in English.

According to Wikipedia there are four main tennis surfaces types:

  • Clay courts
  • Grass courts
  • Hard courts
  • Carpet courts

But when looking at the “sport=tennis’ tag the English and German Wiki pages are note very accurate about the tennis court surface types. The English page does not recommend any “surface” values but refers to the Wiki page (which is ok), but the German page talks about “clay”, “asphalt”, “grass” and “sand”.

But when looking at the”surface” key, only “clay”, “decoturf” and “carpet” are connected with tennis.

“DecoTurf” is a special tennis hardcourt product manufactured by an US company. I think we should avoid using “surface=decoturf”.

When checking taginfo of “sport=tennis” you can see more than 96% of them are combined with “leisure=pitch” but only less than 9% have a “surface” tag. Most of them are “clay”, followed by “paved”, “asphalt”, “concrete” and “sand”. (Next to) none of them are tagged with surface “grass” or “carpet” (or even “decoturf” (good!))!

I am not sure yet, how to tag hard courts (I tend to “hardcourt”), but we should only use the following values for “surface”:

  • clay
  • grass
  • hardcourt
  • carpet

Discussion

Comment from Warin61 on 9 July 2019 at 00:06

I use grass and paved. Not seen a clay court … I have seen concrete and asphalt used as a surface tag for tennis courts in the data base.

Not certain what ‘carpet’ might mean for wikipedia but most people will think of the carpet in homes. I think some think like ‘artificial_turf’ might be more appropriate.

To me hardcourt says the same as paved. I would not use hardcourt.

Comment from EdLoach on 9 July 2019 at 08:01

I’m not sure how after reading wikipedia you decided 4 surface tags are sufficient when the article says the ITF classify into 9 types (with the 9th being “other”).

Surface code Type Description
A Acrylic Textured, pigmented, resin-bound coating
B Artificial clay Synthetic surface with the appearance of clay
C Artificial grass Synthetic surface with the appearance of natural grass
D Asphalt Bitumen-bound aggregate
E Carpet Textile or polymeric material supplied in rolls or sheets of finished product
F Clay Unbound mineral aggregate
G Concrete Cement-bound aggregate
H Grass Natural grass grown from seed
J Other E.g. modular systems (tiles), wood, canvas

Comment from jkirk on 8 February 2021 at 23:11

Quoting Tennis court / Surfaces from Wikipedia:

Tennis is played on a variety of surfaces and each surface has its own characteristics which affect the playing style of the game. There are four main types of courts depending on the materials used for the court surface: clay courts, hard courts, grass courts and carpet courts.

As this is the main information a tennis player is looking for when looking up a tennis court, I think using these four values for the “surface” key should be fine.

And yes, the ITF classifies 9 types and I would also like to classify these “surface codes” too, but I think it is not so easy for an average person to identify the correct surface type. What about using a subkey “surface:code” or “surface:type” to tag this information?

The most famous tennis courts would then be:

Australian Open / OSM: Surface is “hardcourt”. Surface manufacturer is “GreenSet”. Surface Type (according to ITF) is “Acrylic/Polyurethane”. Tag proposal: “surface=hardcourt” and “surface:code=A” and/or “surface:type=Acrylic”.

Wimbledon / OSM: Surface is “grass”. Surface type is “Grass”. Tag proposal: “surface=grass” and “surface:code=H” and/or “surface:type=Grass”.

French Open / OSM: Surface is “clay”. Surface type is “Clay”. Tag proposal: “surface=clay” and “surface:code=F” and/or “surface:type=Clay”.

US Open / OSM: Surface is “hardcourt”. Surface manufacture is Laykold. Surface Type is “Acrylic/Polyurethane”. Tag proposal: “surface=hardcourt” and “surface:code=A” or “surface:type=Acrylic”.

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