Comfort elastic fleece polymer coating for tennis floors

The new generation of fabric backing After the carpet raw material has been tufted and dyed in the colour desired by the customer, the tennis floor is given the necessary nap binding and stability by the back coating. With the classic latex coating, the yarn binding and the coating with a textile secondary backing (action back) are achieved using a highly chalk-filled latex dispersion. This makes the carpet relatively heavy and stiff. With this coating technology, the elasticity only comes from the yarn layer, which is also the wear layer. This means that tennis floors with a classic woven backing become harder year after year, particularly in the main running areas that are subject to the most wear. There is no sustainable elastic layer.

The combination of our very comfortable tennis surfaces (point elasticity) with a sprung floor substructure (surface elasticity) certainly offers maximum force reduction! Hall operators can advertise that their choice of sports flooring offers the maximum in terms of joint protection and force reduction! On the other hand, a sprung floor only develops its comfort when there is a lot of movement. Players who only move a little therefore feel no additional comfort! In terms of ball bounce (flatter) and general playing behaviour (e.g. acoustics), sprung floors are a matter of taste. As a rule, however, players quickly get used to the changed playing conditions. A compact sprung floor can be installed on top of the existing tennis floor covering, provided the surface is level. There is no need to remove and dispose of the old floor covering! If the surface needs to be refurbished, the bonded tennis floor can be removed.

The sliding surfaces used in the past had a number of weak points, which can be attributed to the granules used: Quartz sand is too hard and destroys the base coverings very quickly, while the various rubber granules are too soft and too uneven in shape, so that they in turn are ground up relatively quickly. Both sliding media are controversial due to the dust they generate and bring with them unpleasant side effects such as breathing difficulties, discolouration of clothing and a great deal of cleaning work in the tennis hall and social areas. A new manufacturing process has made significant progress possible: Perfect-Glide tennis granules are not ground from a block of rubber like conventional granules, but are spun into threads using an extruder and then cut to a defined length in a cooling bath. This process enables the production of fine, dust-free extruder micro-granules in a new, optimised lens shape.

The classic smooth velour flooring dominated the market for performance-oriented tennis surfaces until the 1990s. It was made from a special tennis yarn with filament thicknesses of 30-40 dtex (fibre cross-section). The further development of tennis rackets over the last 20 years has fundamentally changed the game of tennis. The development of rackets has made it possible for recreational players to accelerate the ball considerably. Today, the tennis surface has to slow the ball down more and allow it to bounce higher. The very fast classic velour has almost completely disappeared from the market in most countries as a result of the changed requirements for tennis surfaces. On the other hand, the structureless and unfilled surface is favoured by performance-oriented tennis players. With this clientele in mind, the latest development from Schöpp is a very coarse-fibre velour flooring with a single filament thickness of 200 dtex!