The Lexus Nottingham Tennis Centre (LTA) Prepares World-Class Grass Courts with Dennis FT Range

As preparations intensify ahead of the prestigious WTA 250 event at Nottingham Tennis Centre, Grounds Manager Ryan Middleton and his team are working tirelessly to ensure the venue’s grass courts meet the exacting standards expected of one of the UK’s leading pre-Wimbledon tournaments.

Ryan has worked at the Nottingham venue for 28 years and has served as Grounds Manager for the last 12, overseeing the maintenance of 13 grass courts as well as the wider grounds and landscaped areas across the site.

“Looking after all the courts and grounds is a big operation,” said Ryan. “We’ve got 13 grass courts and with the WTA 250 coming up in three weeks, everyone is really looking forward to it.”

Operated by the Lawn Tennis Association, the Lexus Nottingham Tennis Centre has continued to expand its facilities in recent years and now includes eight indoor courts, two air halls, six padel courts, and four new Red Plus courts currently under construction.Alongside the grass courts, we maintain all the indoor facilities as well as the soft and hard landscaped areas around the site.”

With Nottingham forming a key stop on the professional grass-court calendar ahead of Wimbledon, delivering consistent playing conditions is critical.

“Being a pre-Wimbledon tennis event, the standards have to be high,” Ryan said. “The courts need to be consistent with venues such as Queen’s, Eastbourne and Edgbaston. We carry out regular testing for moisture levels and consolidation levels to make sure we’re hitting the right parameters so that when players leave Nottingham and go to Wimbledon, they’re playing on a very similar surface.”

To help achieve those standards, Ryan and his team rely heavily on the Dennis FT Range and Dennis Razor mowers as part of their intensive maintenance programme.

“I used Dennis when I first started working here and I’ve always really enjoyed using them,” he said. “They’re very easy to use and get into all the right places with ease.”

One of the standout features for Ryan is the Dennis FT Range’s interchangeable cassette system, which enables grounds staff to quickly switch between different maintenance tasks using a single machine.

“One thing I love about the interchangeable cassettes is that if you have an accident on court and hit a little stone or damage something, you don’t have to send the whole machine away to get fixed,” he explained. “You can literally change the cassette and carry on, the same goes for servicing.”

That flexibility becomes especially valuable during the busiest periods of the season.

“At this time of year we’re verticutting, sorrel rolling and mowing constantly, so having one machine doing it all is hugely important,”Ryan said.

The Dennis FT Range is recognised throughout the industry as one of the leading interchangeable cassette mower systems for professional fine turf maintenance. Designed and manufactured in the UK, the system offers 12 quick-change cassette options, allowing grounds teams to perform a wide range of maintenance tasks from a single power unit.

Ryan also praised the machine’s ease of adjustment and day-to-day usability.

“The Dennis FT610 and the Dennis Razor mowers we use are very easy to set up and maintain,” he said. “The accessibility to change heights or switch from cutting to verticutting is excellent and it only takes minutes.”

The Nottingham grounds team currently cuts the courts every other day and verticuts twice a week as they prepare the surfaces for tournament play.

“At the moment we’re actually in a very good position because we’ve got too much grass, so we’re thinning the sward out to achieve consistency for play,” Ryan explained.

Verticutting plays a crucial role not only in presentation and performance, but also in plant health and disease prevention.

“One important thing with verticutting is thinning the sward out because you don’t want it too dense,” he said. “What we’ve noticed over the years is that when we’ve got a dense sward, we’re much more prone to pathogen attacks, particularly fusarium. When there’s more air movement around the plant, it becomes much more resilient.”

Court pace is another vital factor in elite grass-court preparation, with the courts regularly tested to meet professional standards.

“The ITF carry out pace testing on the courts,” Ryan added. “Having a thinner, consistent rye grass sward helps us produce a faster, more uniform court, which is what players want when they come onto grass after the clay court season.”

The versatility of the Dennis FT Range allows the Nottingham team to react quickly to changing maintenance requirements throughout the season.

“I can go from mowing to verticutting in minutes,” said Ryan. “I simply take the box off, undo the cassette, swap it over and set the height using the gauge bar and click dials on the side. I can change the height by four, five or even ten millimetres in seconds, and there’s no need for tools.”

The manoeuvrability of the machines also proves invaluable around the venue, particularly during tournament build periods when temporary structures can restrict access.

“These machines are brilliant around the site,” Ryan said. “I can do two runs around the edge, get right into the corners and not miss anything. During tournament builds, the areas can become quite narrow, but we can still move around the whole site with no problem.”

Beyond mowing and verticutting, the Dennis cassette system also supports the club’s renovation work through the use of brush cassettes.

“We use the brush cassette after autumn renovation when we’ve cored the courts to clean up anything left behind,” Ryan explained. “We also use it during spring renovation after moss treatments, just skimming the surface to remove moss from the courts.”

For Ryan and his team, reliability and aftersales support are major reasons why Dennis remains central to the club’s maintenance operation.

“I’d recommend these machines to anyone, anywhere,” he said. “They’re really reliable and if you ever do need parts, you’re not waiting long. Dennis have always been fantastic to us, which is why we continue to use them.”

The Dennis FT Range is available in 17”, 20” and 24” cutting widths and is trusted by professional grounds teams across tennis, cricket, bowls, golf and ornamental fine turf environments worldwide.

(Interviewed before the event -article posted after the event)