Fort Worth Star Telegram
By Karalee Miller
May 26, 2002
No longer limited to summer barbecues and swimming pools, backyard entertainment has a whole new look these days.
Installing such features as basketball and tennis courts and putting greens, more and more people are showing that they've got style as well as game.
And though the price of some specialty athletic courts can reach skyward to $40,000, those who have purchased the backyard additions say it's worth the roughing on the bank account.
"It's wonderful," Melanie Kregling, of Hamden, said about her family's backyard putting green and sand trap, which was installed more than a year ago. Including Landscaping, the project cost about $12,000.
"Our backyard was shady and full of pachysandras. It wasn't great for the kids, and you couldn't do much with it," Kregling said. "Now we have a beautiful patch of green where we couldn't grow grass. The kids love it."
Ted Greiner, owner of landscaping company T.J.B. Inc., which built the Kregling's green, says he's been installing one or two synthetic putting greens each week in Connecticut for the past few years.
He said the greens cost about $3 a square foot for material, plus $8 to $10 a square foot for installation.
"It's worth it for people who want to work on their short game and not have to mow the lawn," he said.
Ron Hambrick, owner of DFW Putting Greens in Texas, says that although he has installed the synthetic putting greens at bed-and-breakfasts and condo complexes, most of his business comes from homeowners wanting to improve their short game and the landscape aesthetics of their backyards.
"The popularity of this application is just exploding. People do not want to spend a lot of time on their backyards" with 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 homeowner Kent Davis, who lives in Texas. 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 the $5,000 he spent on it, says Davis.
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 Curbs 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 shortcourt 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 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 backyard is safety and knowing where your children are," he says.
The court's surface 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.
