Covenant Park – Turkey Day Surprise?

By: admin
On: December 3, 2014

Our blog has developed a tradition of having an annual Thanksgiving week match. Most years we have been surprised with surprisingly warm weather. This year that was not the case as the temperature hovered just above 30 degrees at game time. Our court of choice was Covenant Park in St. Peters thanks to a suggestion by blog reader Austin Diehl.

St. Peters was originally occupied by the Mississippian Mound Builders and as recently as 1970 was a small farming community of less than 500. In the last forty years St. Peters population has grown to over 52,000 making it the 10th largest city in the state of Missouri. Covenant Park was convenient as Stan has a listing just down the street that he and his Remax Select team are in the process of selling for a client. You can view Stan’s listing right here if you are so inclined.

Covenant Park is located west of the Missouri River in St. Peters, Missouri. The Park offers two tennis courts with a synthetic grass surface. We have played on these types of courts many times and they are usually a slow surface.

There were no bathrooms available but the park featured a king sized porta potty which proved perfect for Scott to use to change his clothes. The courts are in good condition with the exception of a slight accumulation of sand in one corner.

As we began to warm up we noticed that these courts were a little faster than normal and the balls stayed pretty low. That may be attributed to the near 30 degree temperature making the surface a little harder and the balls less bouncy.

Stan won the toss and elected to serve and held his serve easily. Scott had a more difficult time fighting through a couple of deuces before finally holding. Stan again held easily to go up 2-1. On Scott’s next serve Stan was able to break and then continued out to a 5-1 lead. Back against the wall Scott finally broke Stan by hitting a lob over his head which landed right on the baseline. He held his serve to get back to 3-5 and then Stan closed it out with an excellent service game punctuated with an overhead winner.

The next set started out well for Scott as he held his service game and won a fantastic point of hard hitting tennis. The point was complimented by a jogger who stopped to say that he enjoyed watching it. Unfortunately that was the highlight of the set for Scott as Stan rolled the rest of the set to take the match 6-3, 6-1. Outside of Stan slipping a couple times in the sand these courts were a fun place to play. We decided to go nearby and enjoy some nourishment from the nearby Great Harvest Bread Company which also happens to be for sale if you are in the mood to be a baker. Court ratings are a 10 for location and a 9 for the court condition for an overall 9.5

Match postscript – Scott had his singles league match later that evening at Frontenac Racquet Club and recovered thrashing his opponent 6-1,6-0.