The Expert Guide to Sports Turf

Imagine having the guarantee of a consistent all-weather surface available year-round.

Thankfully, artificial sports turf means waiting for great weather to enjoy playing sports is no longer required. Rain or shine, artificial sports turf is quickly becoming the preference for community sports, schools and public parks.

In our expert guide to sports turf, you’ll find everything you need (or want) to know about artificial turf for sports. This is a great resource for people who are looking for the perfect sports surface – no matter what your favourite game is, we’ve got all the info here in one place.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• Sports turf for football
• Sports turf for hockey
• Sports turf for tennis
• Sports turf for cricket
• Sports turf for gyms
• Maintenance of sports turf
• Multi-sport turf options

As a notoriously rainy day sport, it’s common for football matches to be a muddy affair.

Grass field nostalgia aside, the use of artificial turf in football and rugby pitches is on the rise, and today, many players prefer training and competing on these surfaces.

Synthetic turf is now being used for full pitches, training areas, mini football and futsal centres because it’s able to provide consistent access to more people all year round.

Advanced artificial grass turf has also been approved by the governing bodies for match levels below the world cup finals.

Natural vs. Artificial Football Turfs

Ain’t nobody got the time (or money) to spend on maintaining a natural grass football pitch to a level that offers players and spectators an enjoyable game.

Innovations in artificial grass football fields mean the surface can reproduce the playing qualities of natural grass. This has led to artificial surfaces becoming a more popular choice.

The fibres used in TigerTurf football surfaces have been well tested to meet FIFA international standards and are soft, non-abrasive fibres that are long enough and strong enough to:

• Hold the ball
• Allow the player to carry out sliding tackles and other skills safely
• Control ball roll and bounce more consistently than natural grass

Our blog The Pros and Cons of Natural vs. Artificial Football Turfs covers these benefits in more detail.

Upgrade your football turf with NRG products

Want a wear-resistant, consistent all-weather surface for your football turf? You heard it here first: Non-Rubber Granules products are the future of synthetic football turf.

Due to no performance infill (rubber), NRG products take the benefits of artificial football turf to another level:

• The product doesn’t absorb all the heat (like rubber does).
• No rubber goes home in socks and boots. This means no littering of rubber in cars, washing machines, and most importantly into our waterways affecting marine life.
• Lower maintenance than natural grass while still looking good.
• Players experience better performance.

Our blog The Best Artificial Turf for Football covers more about the construction, features and benefits of NRG products.

Going artificial (instead of natural) means no more last minute cancellations of practices and matches and more enjoyment for your club, players and spectators.

Read more: Football on Artificial Turf: The Top Five Benefits

A significant contributor to the advancement of hockey has been the development of high-performance synthetic surfaces that allow players to cultivate and perfect their skills safely.

TigerTurf has been at the forefront of this development. Our grain-free playing surfaces enable the ball to run straight and the stick to travel smoothly in all directions without noticeable grabbing or catching. The result is a fast-paced game that players and spectators love.

The most recent updates to the FIH Quality Programme for Hockey Turf made in 2017, brought in a raft of improvements to the way hockey pitches and products are tested for certification.

This means choosing the right sports turf matters even more. Our blog FIH testing guidelines for hockey explains these new changes in more detail.

Maintaining Your Hockey Pitch

Small efforts, frequently, will ensure that you maintain a tip-top hockey pitch. This can save you thousands of dollars in the long run.

Simple maintenance steps look like this:

• Keeping your hockey turf clear of debris
• Watering your sports turf
• Monitoring the conditions of your turf
• Identifying imperfections and fixing them early

If you’re looking for an easy-to-follow maintenance schedule for your hockey turf, look no further than our blog Artificial Turf for Hockey: Maintaining Your Field Hockey Pitch.

As New Zealand’s only synthetic tennis court manufacturer, we have over 40 years of experience and expertise in the development and installation of high-performance tennis court surfaces.

TigerTurf has a range of surfaces that replicate the performance of grass, clay, or hard courts, with most being International Tennis Federation (ITF) rated.

With surfaces for players of all ages and abilities, TigerTurf has a variety of options to meet your tennis surface needs.

Refreshing Your Tennis Court

You can take your tennis court surface from grey and neglected to a high-quality valued asset.

If you have a tennis court that looks like it has seen better days, it may be time to consider resurfacing. If you don’t know where to start with resurfacing your tennis court, we have compiled a guide with everything you need to know about upgrading your tennis court surface.

Read more: Tennis Court Resurfacing: Everything You Need to Know

Easily Maintain Your Synthetic Tennis Court

Maintaining a residential synthetic turf tennis court is a lot like servicing a car. It only needs a good service once a year or so, but there are little things that you can do year-round to keep the turf in excellent shape in between services.

Read our blog for more about the do’s and don’ts of tennis court maintenance.

To a true cricket expert, there’s no greater enjoyment than playing on a well-maintained grass wicket. However, natural wickets aren’t usable for continuous play, training and skills development due to unpredictable weather, the intensity of use and cost of maintenance.

TigerTurf’s superb all-weather cricket turfs are the ideal solution for schools and cricket grounds, and offer a true surface with realistic turn and bounce to help take your game to the next level.

Synthetic Turf Wickets for Young Cricket Players

Practice wickets throughout the world of cricket are notorious for misbehaving but, on a synthetic wicket, players don’t need to be afraid to get behind the ball.

Synthetic wickets remove the unpredictability of unmaintained wickets to create an optimal practice wicket, making it easier for young batters to develop their skills.

Batsmen can learn to bat confidently on an artificial grass wicket, which produces an even pace without the wicked changes in ball flight often experienced on natural grass cricket pitches.

Read more: Developing Young Cricket Players on Synthetic Turf Wickets

Maintaining Your Cricket Turf

While an artificial wicket requires significantly less maintenance than a natural grass wicket, there are still a few important things to keep in mind.

To help you keep your artificial wicket looking sharp, and your game free from distractions, we’ve compiled a list of maintenance tips in our blog, Cricket: Maintaining Your Commercial Cricket Turf.

The selection of a safe gym surface is critical to the success of every workout.

With resistance training becoming increasingly popular, gyms need a hardwearing surface developed to stand up to the use of sledging equipment, high impact conditioning, resistance training, indoor field training, and skills training with quick turns, slides and sudden stops.

TigerTurf has a solution that works as hard as you with a safe and durable surface.

Your Optimum Gym Surface

Our durable, well-designed turf is the product of intensive research and testing. Transform uninspiring functional areas into vivid, attractive exercise areas to work out in – you imagine it, we can make it happen.

Our top-quality TigerTurf Advantage is highly recommended for our gym customers and has performed well for resistance training such as sled push/pull, high impact conditioning and indoor field training. Our blog, Optimum Surface for Resistance Training, covers this in more detail.

If you don’t already have synthetic turf in your workout space, keep reading to see how making the switch is a huge advantage. Some of the benefits include:

• A low impact workout surface
• Versatile and super functional
• Easy to maintain
• Customisable to meet your needs

Create an environment that works for you as well as your members by choosing synthetic grass as part of your flooring solution – your optimum surface for resistance training.

Whether you’re a sports-mad family or school hoping to create multi-purpose sports spaces, multi-sport turf is the solution.

It’s never been easier to design, combine and streamline your play and sports areas. Unlock the functionality of your space by using colour to define different sports codes.

With TigerTurf’s multi-sport surfaces, your tennis court can also be used for hockey practice, developing football skills, basketball, netball; there are many options. A multiplay court, perfect for the whole family or your school.

Read more: Five Benefits of Multi-Sports Turf for Schools

Ready to take your sports turf to the next level with artificial turf? Give our friendly team a call.