Columnist Tom Gorman: How to build great tennis courts and maybe great players

Sunday, Oct. 30, 2005 | 8:29 a.m.

The concern about cracks in Las Vegas 23 brand new tennis courts seems largely academic to me.

I never lost a match point because of a crack. (What's really maddening is the mesh fabric that runs across the middle of the court.)

But to some people, playing on a perfectly constructed tennis court is a joy akin to driving a Bentley or sipping a smoky, single-malt scotch.

Enter Iranian-born Mike Agassi, who at 75 is still enjoying life with gusto as a casino host at MGM. If his name sounds familiar, maybe it's because he boxed in the 1952 Olympics and, after moving to Chicago, won three Golden Gloves.

But mostly, Mike loves tennis and it is his passion to build perfect tennis courts. Ones without cracks.

As a young boy, Mike hung out at a Christian missionary school in Tehran, and watched American and British soldiers play tennis on a dirt court.

He would sprinkle down the court with water and drag a flat stone to level the playing surface.

The missionaries gave Mike a wooden tennis racket. It had no handle grip and was strung with steel wire, and it served him well for years.

Mike eventually moved to Chicago and worked as a busboy and waiter. It was a great town for boxing but not for tennis so he and his bride, Elizabeth, moved to Las Vegas. It promised jobs and good weather.

He landed two jobs at the Tropicana -- as a waiter and tennis pro. And he obsessed on how to build good courts. He read up on it, talked to supposed experts, watched them being built, and inspected them afterward. "I thought," said Mike, who studied physics and engineering in school, "that something different, something better, could be done."

When the hotel built more courts, he so hounded the workers on how to do it properly that he was admonished to leave them alone.

In 1974, Mike built a tennis court behind his home for himself and his four young children. "When I finished it, I knew it was the best tennis court in the country," he said. "I was sure of it."

When he moved to a new home, he built another court.

So this, he says, is how to build a very good tennis court. For starters, slightly slope the court for water drainage. Water is the enemy.

Drainage beneath the court is important, too. So Mike's courts are built atop layers of various-sized rocks and gravel, topped by nearly a foot of hard dirt. The dirt is covered by a layer of plastic so moisture from below doesn't wick up to the concrete. Remember, moisture -- especially frost and ice -- is the enemy, which may be why tennis courts suffer in Chicago.

Here's where Mike separates himself from the pack of tennis court builders. Mike lays down a grid of five-eighths-inch steel rebar atop two-inch-high bricks, so when the concrete is poured and sets, it will have abs of steel. And he gives the concrete an extra spike of cement to make it even more adhesive.

There's much more to the process, of course -- how thick and fast you pour the concrete, whether to add a thin, rubberized coating, how to use a little sand when you paint the lines so the balls won't skid off them weirdly....

I won't even get into court maintenance, but suffice to say that daily he brings out a gas-powered blower that generates a 180-mph wind through a nozzle to keep the court free of dirt.

After the tennis court discussion, we adjourned to his kitchen and visited over hot tea, pastries and almonds.

We talked about our kids, and how my daughter married a handsome Persian who loves soccer.

Mike said his kids stuck pretty much to tennis. His fourth child, Andre, got really really good at it.