Technology’s long tentacles reach into places that don’t immediately pop to mind when the subject is broached. Seemingly unrelated things like tennis and recycling. One Harrison company marries all three: tech, tennis, new life. ReBounces, founded in 2008 and one of the first startups affiliated with the Innovate Arkansas program, developed a way to repressurize old tennis balls and give them new life. Its patented Green Tennis Machine is a bulk repressurization system specifically designed for clubs that go through a lot of practice balls.
Of course, that new life isn’t infinite; eventually, old tennis balls have no new bounce to give. But thanks to a partnership between ReBounces, Ace Surfaces and APT Laykold, those old tennis balls with no bounce left to recycle are providing life for new tennis courts. Used tennis balls are ground up and incorporated as a component in tennis court construction and resurfacing, and ReBounces co-founder Cannon Fletcher believes the surfaces are the best in the business.
“Our mission has always been to provide a cradle-to-grave solution for tennis balls,” Fletcher said. “Our repressuring technology gives tennis balls two or three extra lives, but at the end of the cycle you still end up with tennis balls that are beaten up and have no useful purpose. Now, by putting those unwanted balls into tennis courts, we are providing an appropriate and final resting place.”
The first tennis-ball surface was scheduled to be installed by the end of the month by Ace at Tenafly Racquet Club in Tenafly, New Jersey.
Sign up for Daily E-news
