For more than a year, Philadelphia Country Club’s racquets operation functioned without many of the things that had traditionally surrounded it.
Construction of The Mill displaced the pro shop to the club’s squash building. Platform tennis players used a party tent with heaters and fire pits as a temporary warming hut. At times, construction beside the courts restricted play. 
The tennis, platform tennis and pickleball programs continued. What changed was what members did when they weren’t playing.
“It became a show-up, play and leave scenario,” Director of Racquets Chris Mullin says.
That distinction is useful because court utilization is one of the easier parts of a racquets operation to see. A club can count registrations, lessons, clinics, matches and league participation. It is harder to account for the time members spend before and after those activities, or what that time contributes to the program.
Mullin considers it part of the product.
“They want more than to show up for their scheduled play and then leave,” he says. “They want to run into people, socialize and spend time together.”
The Mill has given Philadelphia CC considerably more infrastructure for that part of the operation. The permanent platform tennis warming hut sits beside the courts. Members can walk from a match into 1601, the club’s new sports bar. Food and beverage, retail and the pool are all close enough that racquets no longer has to function as a destination unto itself.
That has implications for programming.
Mullin isn’t simply anticipating more lessons and clinics as members discover the new facility. He is looking at larger social events built around racquets, including events that already existed but were constrained by the space available to support them.
“The next phase is creating a giant social event around racquets every month or every couple of weeks throughout the year,” he says.
The interesting part is that Philadelphia Country Club learned something about its racquets program while much of that supporting environment was temporarily gone.
Members continued to play, but Mullin saw how quickly the experience narrowed when there was nowhere to go and little reason to stay once a match ended.
The Mill gives him those places back while also giving him a larger canvas for the program itself. The next measure of its success won’t simply be how many members pick up a racquet. It will be how much more Mullin can build around the ones who already do.
