Club + Resort Business’ Second Annual Awards recognize Ansley Golf Club, with two campuses—the original in Atlanta’s Midtown region and a second about 27 miles away in Roswell, Ga.—for keeping its robust tennis program alive throughout the pandemic by introducing an in-house league. “Members have liked [the intraclub program] so much, there’s been talk about continuing it next year, even if the risk [of league play] is gone,” says Matt Grayson, the club’s Director of Athletics.
The December 2020 issue of Club + Resort Business features the 2020 Innovation Awards, recognizing club and resort properties that have conceived and implemented concepts that have paid real dividends in the form of enduring member and guest satisfaction and loyalty.
This property was recognized for innovative achievement in the Recreation + Fitness category:
Ansley Golf Club, with two campuses—the original in Atlanta’s Midtown region and a second about 27 miles away in Roswell, Ga.—has approximately 400 active families and a robust tennis program.
As with most clubs in the Atlanta area, Ansley participates in the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association (ALTA), which in normal years sees roughly 100,000 people play in the leagues each week. When COVID-19 hit hard in March, however, league play was halted, and tennis came to a grinding stop.
Ansley brought back its own tennis program slowly in May, with lessons first, says Matt Grayson, the club’s Director of Athletics. Singles play was then re-introduced and eventually, the club got its internal program back up and running. But resuming interclub play was too much of a risk—one positive test from a visiting player could set off a domino effect for too many members and staff.
“Without league play, not only do our members lose a lot of their opportunity to play, but our staff with five full-time tennis pros also doesn’t have a lesson base,” Grayson says. “So to help generate that revenue for the club and also restore a full activity level for the members, we decided to try to create our own in-house league.”
However, Grayson notes, “ALTA is the big gorilla in the room here in Atlanta, so when that went away, we weren’t sure if people would still want to play in some sort of league format.” To generate interest, the Ansley team devised a plan to make traditional league play much more social. Each team had all different levels for players, from top level to beginners, creating a fresh new appeal for participating.
“The social aspect has really been great,” Grayson says. “There are ladies who never met each other who are becoming friends.”
Roughly 280 Ansley members—men, women and children—ended up participating in the in-house league this year, as the club successfully conducted a seven-week season. The success of the intraclub league boosted total court usage past 2019’s level of just over 8,400 hours, even with a shutdown in 2020 from mid-March through April.
“I think we could certainly hit 10,000 hours this year, even with the shutdown,” Grayson said in November. “Lesson and free-play court bookings have been higher than any other fall at the club. We are actually hiring another full-time staff pro due to the member demand for lessons and programming.
“We have plans to get back into regular ALTA and USTA league play [in 2021],” Grayson adds. “But members have liked [the intraclub program] so much, there’s been talk about continuing it next year, even if the risk [of league play] is gone.”
C+RB featured the Ansley Golf Club intraclub tennis program in an episode of The Road Back.
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