Fort Greene Tennis Courts

Fort Greene Tennis Courts sit at the southern end of Fort Greene Park, near the intersection of DeKalb Avenue and South Portland Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The facility has six outdoor hard courts. They were resurfaced in 2026 with a Titan Trax Shield overlay and Laykold acrylic filler, part of the same product family used at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows.

Getting to the courts is straightforward. The nearest subway stop is the C and G trains at Lafayette Avenue, one block south of the park's DeKalb Avenue entrance. The park spans from Myrtle Avenue on the north to DeKalb Avenue on the south, and the courts are clustered at that southern edge.

Fort Greene runs on a same-day sign-up sheet, not online reservations. Every player needs an NYC Parks tennis permit: a $100 adult season permit or a $15 single-play pass, one per person. A Parks attendant is on site through the week, checks permits when you sign up, and checks again before you walk on.

The sheet goes up at or before 6:30am. You sign up in person, for your own group only, for one session that day: one hour of singles or two hours of doubles. Signing up for a friend, for a second slot, or for more than one group is not allowed, and the Fort Greene Tennis Association, the volunteer group that runs programs here, enforces it.

Outside the sign-up window the courts are first come, first served. Before 6:30am and after 8pm you can walk on with a permit, and the house rule is to keep it to an hour if anyone is waiting.

In summer the line forms at dawn. Hard Hitting, a Brooklyn tennis newsletter, calls Fort Greene the most complained-about queue in the borough and reports regulars in line before 6am. If you want a morning court in July, treat sunrise as your arrival time. Mid-morning on a weekday is the realistic walk-up window. The season runs April 1 through the Sunday before Thanksgiving; off season, no permit is needed anywhere in the NYC Parks system.

There are no lights, so play ends at dusk. The park's landmark status and the lack of electrical infrastructure make lights unlikely in the future, and the tennis association has said as much.

Ron Holmberg learned to play tennis here and went on to reach the number seven world ranking in the 1950s. Colombian professional Santiago Giraldo used these courts as practice space before the 2016 US Open qualifying rounds.

Fort Greene Park itself is Brooklyn's oldest park, redesigned in the 1860s by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Tennis has been played here for more than a century, and the Fort Greene Tennis Association has run programs and advocacy for the facility since 2009.

For more places to play, see the best public tennis courts in NYC or browse every court in the city. Then find a partner at your level on Doyouplay before you go.