Tennis players love, loved the turfgrass science and management program’s free grass courts

Think of an iconic moment in tennis—Rafael Nadal’s win over Roger Federer, John McEnroe throwing a fit, Venus and Serena Williams facing off across the net, Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King winning the doubles title, Pete Sampras’s career—and even those who don’t follow the sport will likely imagine a game played on the iconic grass courts of Wimbledon. Grass courts have a long and storied history in the sport, and are often considered the ultimate surface that brings out the best in an elite player. What most don’t know is that the Turfgrass Science Program, run by UMass Amherst’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture, is revered not only for its research into sports turfs, but for its grass tennis courts—free for all—that have drawn tennis players from all across the U.S. for more than a decade.

“I started this program 12 years ago,” says Scott Ebdon, emeritus professor of turfgrass science at UMass Amherst, “because one of our alums, who was then the director of the Longwood Cricket Club, one of the world’s oldest tennis clubs and a magnet for grass players, reached out to me and asked for tennis-related research.”

UMass Amherst has long been one of the nation’s top spots for turf grass research: graduates of the Associate of Science and Bachelor of Science turf degree programs are professional managers at premier facilities across the country, many of which include top 100 golf courses, professional sports facilities, public parks, and school and college grounds.

“Five of the ten top-ranked golf courses in the U.S. are managed by golf course superintendents that graduated from the Stockbridge School of Agriculture and UMass Amherst,” says Michelle DaCosta, professor of turfgrass physiology at UMass Amherst. “The head grounds manager at Gillette Stadium, home to the Patriots, the New England Revolution, and future site of the 2026 World Cup is a graduate, as is the current field director of the National Football League.”

UMass Amherst’s is the sole academic tennis-turf-research program in the U.S., in part because, while most town parks have asphalt courts, there are only a few hundred grass courts in the country. Not only are they expensive to maintain, with daily mowing and rolling, but they are far more challenging to play on.

“Grass is definitely not for amateurs,” says Ebdon, who points to three distinctions that give a grass court its special character. The first is that no matter how well a maintenance team rolls the surface of the court to compact, harden and flatten it, micro-imperfections will inevitably emerge as players lunge, sprint, dive, jump, and backpedal their way to a volley, wearing away the grass cover and marring the smooth surface.

“Grass is less predictable,” says Ebdon, “and you’ll often see the pros at Wimbledon pointing to a specific place on the court after losing a point to indicate that the ball took a weird bounce.”

Not only can the bounces be unpredictable, the ball has less of a vertical bounce on grass than asphalt—which means that it has more energy, or ball speed, to travel horizontally, coming at a player faster. And whereas the rough texture of a hard asphalt court slows a ball down, on grass the ball slides, maintaining most of its horizontal velocity.

“Playing on grass is playing in the fast lane,” says Ebdon, “and the players have markedly less time to get where they need to be to return a serve or volley.”

The goal of tennis turf research is both to slow the ball down just a bit and develop turf that can withstand the wear and tear of constant play, which, Ebdon notes, can’t adequately be simulated with machines.

“The best way to understand how different tennis turfs wear is to have players play on them,” he says.

And so Ebdon laid out three singles courts at the UMass Amherst’s Joseph Troll Turf Research Center, filling each court with eight different kinds of grasses. Funding for the research was kindly provided by the New England Regional Turf Foundation. Anchor posts, tennis nets and court line painters were donated to the Troll Turf Center by Longwood Cricket Club.

To attract players, Ebdon began circulating word through the tightly knit grass-court communities that they could come and play—and that UMass Amherst wouldn’t charge them a dime, an almost unheard of offer, since grass is so expensive to maintain. “We even printed up and gave away shirts,” says Ebdon: “‘I Played on Grass at UMass,’ they said.”

Ebdon built it, and they came in droves: serious amateurs, retired afficionados, even semi-pros. “Once the word got out, we had folks coming from all over the U.S.,” says Ebdon, “and that was the most fun part of the 12-year research project: I met so many great people, and I can’t think of a better way to end my career.”

After more than 5,000 ball drops to test the bounce of different turfs, inquiries into fertilization, pest resistance and durability, and countless matches played by thrilled enthusiasts, the grass courts, having served their research purpose, closed in September, 2024. But not before the UMass Ladies Tennis Team, 2024 A10 Champions, played one final round on their beloved courts. Over the previous six-year period, more the 150 players on grass averaged 125 hours of play per year per court—including numerous tournaments.

“The research we conducted was priceless and I was sad when it all came to an end,” says Ebdon, “but the best part was bringing scientists and players into conversation with each other.”