Peanut Tennis
Peanut Tennis maps 3,737 Australian tennis venues, including 1,361 free park courts, and lists 149 upcoming sanctioned tournaments by state and age group.
Overview
Peanut Tennis is an Australian web directory built around two narrow jobs: finding a tennis court and finding a sanctioned tournament. The site indexes 3,737 venues nationwide, 1,361 of which are free park courts, and maintains a rolling calendar of upcoming events filterable by state, age group and date. It sidesteps the social feed, coaching marketplace and equipment retail angles that most tennis apps chase, choosing instead to operate as a logistics and reference layer. The operator states plainly that the service is independent and unaffiliated with Tennis Australia or UTR Sports, a disclosure that matters because much of the underlying tournament data originates with those bodies. The editorial voice is informal and self-aware, but the data model underneath is conventional and useful: venue, surface, lighting, access rules on one side, and event, state, age bracket and draw status on the other.
Key Features
- National venue index of 3,737 courts. The directory spans park courts, licensed clubs and commercial tennis centres, returning results nearest first once a location is supplied. Each entry carries enough context to decide whether a venue is worth travelling to before leaving the house.
- 1,361 free park court listings. Roughly a third of the indexed venues cost nothing to play on. That ratio is the product's clearest differentiator against club directories, which tend to surface only fee-paying facilities with pro shops and booking desks.
- Surface, lighting and access metadata. Listings record whether a court is floodlit, what surface it uses and how players get on it, which resolves the most common failure mode of map-based court hunting: arriving at a locked gate after dark.
- City-level free court pages. Dedicated pages break out free options by metro area, with Melbourne listing 152 courts and Sydney listing 174. These pages function as landing points for players who search by city rather than by postcode.
- Tournament calendar with 149 upcoming events. The calendar is segmented by state and territory, with Victoria carrying 63 events, Queensland 30, New South Wales 29, South Australia 13, Western Australia 6, and ACT and Tasmania 4 each. Age group and date filters sit alongside the state split.
- Entry lists published before draws. Players can see who has entered an event before the draw is released, which is a meaningful planning advantage when deciding whether a tournament is worth the entry fee and travel.
- Plain-English guides and by-laws. The guides section covers UTR ratings, tournament tiers, ball colours and first-tournament preparation, while a separate rules section translates association by-laws out of legal register into everyday language.
How It Works
The workflow is deliberately shallow. A visitor lands on the homepage, which splits immediately into a court path and a tournament path. Choosing courts opens a location-aware search that orders venues by distance and exposes filters for cost, surface and lighting. Choosing tournaments opens a state-by-state calendar where events can be narrowed by age group and date. From either path, a detail page supplies the practical facts: for venues, the surface, lights and access method; for events, the entry list and draw status.
There is no account requirement, no saved-playlist layer and no in-app messaging visible on the public site. The product behaves like a well-organised reference shelf rather than a platform. A player typically moves from discovery to a third-party entry system, using Peanut Tennis to shortlist and then completing the transaction elsewhere. The guides and rules pages absorb the questions that would otherwise generate support load, covering rating systems, tier structures and the by-laws that govern association events.
Use Cases
A parent in suburban Melbourne wants a first competitive outing for a junior player. The city free court page identifies 152 no-cost venues for practice, and the tournament calendar filters Victoria's 63 upcoming events down to the relevant age bracket, with entry lists visible so the parent can gauge field size before committing.
A travelling club player with a free Saturday in Sydney checks the 174 free park courts listed for the metro area, filters for floodlit surfaces to allow a twilight hit, and confirms access rules before leaving.
A competitive player weighing two tournaments on the same weekend uses entry lists to compare the strength and size of each field before the draw is published, then reads the tier guide to understand how each result would affect a UTR rating.
A newcomer to sanctioned play reads the first-tournament guide and the plain-English by-laws to understand ball colour progressions and entry obligations, avoiding the administrative friction that causes late withdrawals and forfeits.
Who It's For
Peanut Tennis targets Australian competitive players, the parents who ferry junior players to events, and coaches who need a fast answer on court availability or upcoming draws. It is a poor fit for anyone outside Australia, and it does not replace booking platforms, club management software or the official entry systems run by governing bodies. Against Google Maps, which finds parks but knows nothing about surfaces or tournaments, and against the governing body's own fixtures page, which carries authority but little usability, the site occupies a practical middle position as an independent, fast-loading index.
Pros & Cons
The Good
- Indexes 3,737 Australian venues, including 1,361 free park courts, inside a single searchable directory.
- Tournament pages surface entry lists before draws are released, giving players visibility into field size and strength.
- State-level tournament counts let players scan 149 upcoming events across all eight states and territories at a glance.
- City free court breakdowns, such as 152 in Melbourne and 174 in Sydney, serve players who want to avoid club fees entirely.
- Guides and association by-laws are rewritten in plain English, lowering the administrative barrier for first-time tournament entrants.
The Bad
- Coverage is limited to Australia, so the directory offers nothing for players or events outside the country.
- The site is a reference and discovery layer only, with no booking, payment or draw management tools built in.
- The public pages expose no accounts, saved courts or notifications, so repeat visitors get no personalised view.