Tennis News You Can Use
Effective January 1, 2021, the Fair Oaks Tennis Center in Dallas is permanently closed. To the best of my knowledge, the only place where the closure notification has been published is on the Facebook page for the facility. The announcement of the impending shut down was first shared on December 6.
The closure is a result of budget cuts by the City of Dallas. Due to the COVID situation, the Parks and Rec budget was slashed dramatically in 2021. As a facility, Fair Oaks is expensive to operate primarily due to the fact that the facility floods almost every time it rains. The constant cleanup and reopening is costly.
The Facebook forum comments to the closure notification are a litany of appreciation and nostalgia for Fair Oaks. The facility consistently hosted small USTA sanctioned and UTR tournaments. These are exactly the kind of “grassroots” events that the USTA is targeting in the tournament restructuring initiative. Hopefully another facility in the area will pick up the slack.
Like so many others on the Facebook facility page, I have fond memories of the tournaments at the Fair Oaks Tennis Center. The Umpire I Gave Birth to played a lot of tournaments there. I also once played a tournament there when I was first getting back into competitive tennis. The news that it will be permanently closed made me profoundly sad.
Farewell, Fair Oaks. We will miss you and the 16 lighted public courts.
