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The 12 Most Scenic Tennis Courts Around the World

From the Amalfi Coast to Montauk, these are the hotel courts where the view is the real competition.

A regulation tennis court has been 2,808 square feet since Major Walter Clopton Wingfield patented lawn tennis in 1874, but the landscape surrounding those 2,808 square feet has never been worth more to the hospitality industry than it is right now. Golf dominated resort programming for a century because it consumed acreage and signaled wealth, but the economics have flipped: a single tennis court occupies a fraction of one fairway, generates comparable revenue per square foot and—thanks to padel, the glass-walled doubles format that has quadrupled its global player base to over 35 million since 2018 and now counts 77,000 courts across 150 countries—can be stacked, lit and programmed into a social venue that guests actually use instead of guiltily ignoring for the pool. 

When Luca Guadagnino's Challengers grossed $96 million and turned Zendaya in a tennis skirt into the defining fashion image of 2024, the last cultural barrier fell: the court stopped being an amenity and became the destination. U.S. tennis participation has since surged 54 percent to 27.3 million players, coaching academies run by Grand Slam champions now anchor entire resort identities, and the facilities going up in 2025 and 2026 are not the neglected hard courts behind the spa that most travelers remember from childhood.

The question, then, is where. The best hotel tennis courts make the same implicit promise: that the setting will be so distractingly beautiful you will forgive yourself for losing. What follows are 12 courts—on cliffs, across private islands, above seas named by Homer—where the scenery reliably wins that competition.

The Most Beautiful Tennis Courts in the World

Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino, Messinia, Greece

II San Pietro di Positano, Amalfi Coast, Italy

Monte-Carlo Country Club, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France

Cromlix Hotel, Perthshire, Scotland

Gstaad Palace, Gstaad, Switzerland

Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, Cap d'Antibes, France

Necker Island, British Virgin Islands

Enchantment Resort, Sedona, Arizona

The Breakers, Palm Beach, Florida

Montauk Yacht Club, Montauk, New York

Cheval Blanc Randheli, Noonu Atoll, Maldives

Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino, Messinia, Greece

Navarino Bay, Costa Navarino, 24001 Pylos, Messenia, Greece

In Homer’s Odyssey, Telemachus sailed to this coast 3,000 years ago looking for his father and found Greeks sacrificing bulls to Poseidon........

© Observer