London
Be prepared, I'm about to have a moan.
I spend my life looking for good tennis courts in London. I've cursed at Clapham Common, bitched at Brockwell Park and screamed at Southfields.... All terrible, badly managed facilities.
What about Vauxhall i hear you cry? Surely SW8 will be the jewel in the turd of South London tennis! Surely this is where i will wile away the long summer evenings! As i walked from the station towards Lawn Lane i was in quite high spirits. I had visions of neatly cut hedge rows, pristinely mown grass courts and all the Robinson's you could drink. Perhaps the local 1st XI would be playing cricket on the pitch next to the courts. Maybe the players wives would have made fresh lemonade and kindly offered us some after our match. We'd all be best friends by the end of the evening. Ahhh, blighty in the summer.....
Take everything i have just said and imagine the exact opposite. You will then be close to my experience last night. Walking into the park and seeing a tramp being sick in a bin was not the best of starts to my evening. Finding out that the idiots at Lambeth council had quadruple booked the courts didn't help matters either. But it was the quality of the tennis court that really made my blood boil. The oak tree next to the perimeter fencing is massively overgrown, meaning branches play a big part in any games being played on court 1 and the quality of the playing surface is also atrocious. Wild bounces are a regular occurence due to pot holes on the base line and the Vesuvius esq. terrain in the tramlines.
I could go on, but i'm just getting angry writing this review. I really hope someone at the council reads this and does something about the state of public tennis courts in London. Maybe this is why we haven't produced a decent player since Fred Perry......
Check out my review of Vauxhall Park Tennis Courts - I am ahunter - on Qype
