Court Booking Rules

All members must comply with the direction of the monitor. If the monitor requests that you vacate the court, you must do so immediately. Failure to comply will result in escalating the matter to the disciplinary committee and may result in suspension/termination of membership.

1. Members may hold two active bookings in the system at a time, comprised of two 2-hour doubles, two 1-hour singles, two 1-hour doubles or any combination of these. As soon as a court is used or cancelled, you may book another court. The system will not allow you to have more than 2 active bookings at any given time. You can switch between singles or doubles booking each time that you book.

2. Four (4) members names are required for doubles bookings and two (2) members names are required for singles bookings. You MUST have previously added the other members to your “booking buddies” list (so you have their permission) to use their name(s) for the court and ONLY those members listed on the court may play. Violating this rule will result in a suspension of membership. The names and photographs of the players who have booked courts will be available for other members to see. If all players on the court are not the same players that booked the court, any member may ask the group to relinquish the court and that court may now be used as a walk-on court. We ask that walk-on players notify us if this occurs. If players refuse to relinquish the court, the club should be notified and this matter will be dealt with by the disciplinary committee.

3. Available courts will show 7 days in advance you can book them on a rolling basis. For example, you can book a court for the following Sunday evening at 7pm, just after 7pm the week before.

4. Members can only book available courts. Many of our courts are reserved for teams, house league, lessons and our high performance program. Our club has always been a league-based club. We encourage all members to try to join intercounty or house league teams or attend our Monday social in order to get the most out of their membership.

5. With the convenience of online court booking, there is an added responsibility for members to use the courts they have reserved. Cancellations can be made online up until 1 hour before reserved court time (i.e. reservations cannot be cancelled within one hour of reserved court time). Reservations cancelled within one hour of the reserved court time and no-shows (when any person on the court booking has NOT shown up for a court reservation) will be considered misuse of the booking system. Failure to cancel a court in time or no shows will result in an automatic 7 day loss of booking and playing privileges. During this penalty period, the member will not be able to book any courts on our booking system. Any existing bookings will also be cancelled. We hope that all members will use the time that they book, so courts are not wasted. Monitors will note any courts that do not get used when they are working in prime time. For the rest of the time, we ask that members who are playing on other courts notify us by email to manager@rhltc.ca, if they see booked courts that are not being used. It is in all of our interest to ensure that court time does not get wasted.

6. Rain-out courts or wet courts do not need to be cancelled and will not result in any penalty. Check the court camera’s to see if the surface is dry and playable. You will be able to book more courts immediately after the time of your rained out court has passed, provided that courts are available and not already booked.

7. Courts may be booked up to the start time. Any court not booked by the start time can no longer be booked and members may walk-on to that court. You must be a member to walk on to a court and walk-ons do not prevent you from having another upcoming booking. There are no guests allowed at the club other than during public court hours in the afternoon.

8. If a booked court remains open after the start time, members may also walk onto that court. However, if the members that booked the court arrive at any time during the booking period, the court must be given to the members who booked it. If the members do not arrive at all, we request the members using the court to notify us by email to manager@rhltc.ca that the booking was not used by the members who reserved the court.

9.If you are playing on a booked court and the players who made the booking for the following hour do not show up, you may continue playing if there is no one else waiting for a walk-on court. If there is someone else waiting, you must relinquish the court for those members. They will in turn have to relinquish the court for the members who booked it, if they do arrive during the booking time.

10. Any “gaming” of the system is contrary to the rules and will result in penalties. Examples of this are:

- Any booking that does not have the same members playing as the booking shows

- Booking a court for singles and then playing doubles without changing the booking

These examples above notwithstanding, the Board reserves the right to issue penalties to members for any additional scenarios used to circumvent the rules.

11. The club reserves the right to move bookings to any other court or cancel the court if necessary to accommodate club programming. Members will be notified should this occur. This does not take place often and we do our best to provide other options and accommodate players when it does happen.