Playing tennis with a purpose
Spotted: Tennis is one of the most popular sports around the world, suitable for a huge range of ages and abilities. In fact, according to the International Tennis Federation, around 87 million people play the sport, with even more enjoying watching it on TV. Inspired by his personal love of the sport, Rich Neher founded Conga Sports in 2021, to support grassroots tennis and make it more accessible with innovative programmes and tournaments.
The organisation’s big flagship programme, called City Slams, involves teams of six (three men and three women) playing for their city and community, competing for “trophies and bragging rights”, as Rich explained to Springwise. Contrary to your average tennis match, Conga Sports makes fun a priority in its tournaments. For instance, the City Slams teams must come up with a creative group name, as well as dress in inventive costumes and perform a team song.
When Rich moved to the States from Germany in 1985, he was shocked by the lack of recycling. “At that time we already had a flourishing recycling environment in Germany (…) I came to this country and there was nothing. Even today, there’s very little recycling in buildings: the trash goes out and everyone throws everything in the same dumpster.” This same wastefulness is also reflected in the world of tennis – from equipment packaging, racquet strings, and most importantly, tennis balls. Rich highlights that 400 million tennis balls are used every year, with 200 million of those ending up in landfills.
To make tennis greener as well as more inclusive, all Conga Sports balls are sent to Vermont-based RecycleBalls for repurposing. After grinding them up, the balls can be used for various purposes, including for horse footing and new tennis court surfaces.
Rich also wanted to take sustainability to the next level, and partnered with One Tree Planted earlier this year. Through this partnership, Conga Sports has committed to planting one tree for every can of tennis balls used in its programmes. Although Rich emphasises that because Conga Sports is a young company and it’s limited in how many trees it can contribute, he hopes it can have a much bigger impact in future. “Our goal for 2030 – it’s a very ambitious goal I must admit – is to have planted 1 million trees. It’s a big goal, but I’m determined,” Rich told Springwise.
Springwise has spotted other ways innovators are making the sports industry less harmful to the planet, including by turning plastic water bottles into tennis accessories and using natural rubber to make greener wetsuits.
Written By: Matilda Cox
This elegant tennis facility is defined by white concrete and cantilevered slabs in Spain. The complex includes a total of seventeen courts of all surfaces, from grass to clay. The topography of the land called for a terracing strategy in order to place the different courts at different levels following the slope of the hill. As a result, the team set out to design the building as a continuation of that terracing: as seen in section, multiple floating terraces overlook the tennis compound. The Centre Court is the heart of the project. A series of terraces are carved in the hill create a natural stone stadium to seat up to 1500 spectators.
In Strasbourg, the idea was to create a new tennis hall building for three covered tennis courts and and a new club house. The design is directly inspired by people and how they flow in and through the building. Inside, sky domes and a special color treatment on the floor was chosen to increase day light. Areas where natural light falls were treated with a beige resin, while the room borders and corners are treated with a deep orange resin. The soaring roof forms and domes are readily seen in section, and how the building compares in scale to adjacent structures.
The Glen Lake Community Schools project was made with three components: a new bus garage; new team rooms for home team and visitor teams for soccer and softball; and a new tennis complex with a gateway building. The floor plan drawing for the team rooms showcases how the pavilion structures were organized and designed, emphasizing connection to the outdoors and with a series of welcoming overhangs. By opening to natural light, using natural materials like glulam beams, and the use of insulated roof panels, the team wanted to highlight the uniqueness of the Glen Lake community and its commitment to the natural environment and energy efficiency.
GLUCK+ designed the Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning as a multi-use facility. The complex is where underserved youth in New York City can receive free tennis lessons and academic help. As the flagship site for New York Junior Tennis & Learning, the center was made to host local, national and international tournaments. Sited in the natural parkland of Crotona Park, the project included a clubhouse, public tennis courts, and sunken exhibition courts. The building and stadium courts were partially buried as a strategy to minimize the impact of a large structure in the park and also to take advantage of geothermal heating and cooling.
This temple to tennis was built in Switzerland. As seen in the drawings, the 
Adjacent to the court, this guest house is located within the grounds of an existing family beach house in a secluded coastal setting. The client required a guest house that would embrace the native landscape while establishing its own identity distinct from the existing house. The team’s design concept was to create a building as a landscape element that forms a backdrop to the existing tennis court and is nestled within the surrounding vegetation. A rectilinear timber pavilion was built with weathered grey cladding and climbers growing up over the walls to give the appearance of a simple timber fence within the landscape.
MVRDV’s famous Couch project was built in IJburg, a new district to the east of Amsterdam. The newly formed IJburg Tennis Club included ten clay courts and a tennis school. The clubhouse was made to be the heart of the center, providing both a viewing platform and a club overlooking the water. The challenge was to create a building that worked as a central gathering area, a living room for IJburg. The result is a clubhouse with a roof dipping down towards the south and raised towards the north, creating an informal tribune for the club. Inside, the construction is clad with FSC-certified wood, with the outside fully sealed with an EPDM polymer hotspray in the same color and texture as the clay tennis courts.