Sharon Lester Tennis Center at Piedmont Park

Sharon Lester is located smack dab in the middle of Piedmont Park. It’s a great facility with 12 courts, all hard-​surfaced, that are well-​maintained. The club house is a little rugged, but it has a great indoor viewing area with both first and second floors, including an upstairs patio.
I love coming here for Coach Joe’s cardio tennis class. For $ 15 I have never burned less than 800 calories in an hour. It’s pretty stellar, and crazy intense the first few times you go. It’s a typical drills class but WAY faster… to the point that you don’t have much time to focus on your technique nor do you have any time at all to check out where your ball went… just hit the ball and run to the back of the line (which by the time you get there, you’re back at the front of the line). Joe always keeps the class interesting — it’s never the same drills, and I’m always gasping for breath– it’s a good thing. All of their other drills are excellent, and they have great pros. I like that they have lots of choices for drills on weekday evenings and at various skill levels. Also, the price of their drills classes are slightly cheaper than other tennis centers.
What I really like about playing tennis at SLAPP (Sharon Lester at Piedmont Park) is that because parking is such a pain I mostly only see fellow Midtown neighbors here. Almost everyone who comes to SLAPP walks or bikes there. It feels like our own true neighborhood tennis center like all those OTP folks in their gated communities have. I’ve met lets of friends in my clinics that all live nearby.
If you can’t walk or bike, you can find closeby parking at the Sage garage (next to the Botanical gardens) but it is pricey. The garage can be accessed from Piedmont or Monroe. If parking is your only option to get to SLAPP, then you need to park at Sage. Trust me on this. I have had many people try to street park and walk and even if you get a decently close parking spot to the park, it’s going to be a long walk to the tennis center… and even longer if you haven’t been to SLAPP before and are not sure of exactly where the entrance is (on the edge of the active oval).
As for team matches, I’ve played here a couple of times as an «away» team and the experience is hit or miss, being completely dependent on which courts your match is assigned to. I like Courts 1 & 2 for matches, that edge right up to the public restrooms, because there is plenty of room for chairs, tables, etc and you are right next to bathrooms. Courts 5 & 6 are an obvious choice as well as they are the prime seating area. All the other courts make it really difficult to set up chairs and tables… we have set up shop on the sidewalk between tennis courts and basketball courts before, but it is less than ideal. It would be nice if SLAPP provided tables for teams to use.
This is not the place to go for a spontaneous, casual hit-​around with a friend. Although they occasionally have courts open, the wait time on a weekend can be upwards of an hour. If you want to do that, you’ll need to reserve a court 2 – 3 days in advance.
I love coming here as my neighborhood tennis center, and they do a lot of things right. Stop by!