The lawns have been shut since January 9th to preserve them from compaction damage due to footfall in the very soft conditions. There is a strong suspicion that some damage has occurred to court 2 during the autumn owing to the much wetter and softer than normal conditions. We are keen to reopen court 1 as soon as we can be confident we will not compact/damage the playing surface.
The assessment at the moment is that if drier conditions prevail over the next few days into early February. Then we should be able to resume play around February 6/7. I will let you know firmly one way or the other once we see the rainfall figures for the weekend (February 1/2) and I have inspected the lawns again around the 4/5th.
For information, the rainfall figures show we have had a very wet autumn and have had a wetter than normal January. They are:
- For the autumn months (Oct-Dec) in the very wet conditions last year total rainfall was 260mm, compared to 160mm in 2017 and 175mm in 2018. So it was substantially higher and left the ground saturated and unable to absorb the rain that continued to fall on a regular basis.
- The January rains we had were heavy at the beginning of the month with 22mm falling in week 2 when we shut the lawns and 28mm in week 3. We have had two drier weeks with 14mm falling. We have only had 5 rain free days since the closing the lawns, which has tended to keep things ‘topped up’. January rainfall this year was 69mm, three times that when compared to the 2019 figure of 23mm.