Play Tennis at 2,400m

When mapping the world’s grass tennis courts, the trail rarely leads to Central America. Yet, sitting 2,400 meters above sea level in the highlands of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, a remarkable private lawn court has taken root.

Born out of the isolation of the 2020 lockdowns, “La Pera” (The Pear) is a testament to family ingenuity, deep-seated tennis passion, and some highly creative agronomic problem-solving. For a tennis-playing family looking for a breath of fresh air during a difficult time, the expansive grounds of their private estate provided the perfect canvas for a bold experiment: bringing grass-court tennis to the Guatemalan highlands.

Agronomy and Improvised Engineering

Building a natural grass court in a region where they are practically nonexistent requires significant improvisation. The project merged the complementary skills of a real estate developer and a mother with extensive landscaping expertise.

At an elevation of 2,400 meters, standard warm-weather grasses like Bermuda would struggle to thrive, and sourcing Perennial Ryegrass proved too difficult. The family successfully adapted by seeding the court with Festuca (Fescue), a resilient genus well-suited to the cooler, high-altitude climate.

Without access to specialised turf machinery, the family partnered with a local welder to fabricate the necessary maintenance equipment from scratch. The heavy roller required to firm up the baseline and playing surface is an ingeniously repurposed gas tank filled with cement, and the custom line-marking machine was engineered purely by studying reference photographs.

The Legend of the Pear Tree

The court measures a slightly modified 16 by 35 meters, a dimension dictated by a specific natural feature that gives the court its name. Rather than uprooting a mature, fruit-bearing pear tree during construction, the family chose to preserve it, resulting in the court’s distinctive slanted corners.

For the first three years after the heavy roller and welders departed, the tree stubbornly refused to produce fruit—a silent protest, the family joked, to the commotion of construction. Today, however, the tree yields hundreds of pears annually, standing as a beautiful, living spectator to the matches played beside it.

A Family Tradition

While the court can be accessed via special inquiry through the family-owned Cantabria Country Club situated just a kilometre away, La Pera remains fundamentally a sanctuary for connection.

Twice a year, the estate hosts a highly anticipated family tournament. The format eschews cutthroat competition in favour of camaraderie: mixed doubles, round-robin match tie-breaks, with the strict stipulation that every player must partner with either their wife or daughter. Surrounding the tennis are structured educational activities for the children, catering, and highly competitive men’s and women’s exhibition doubles to close out the afternoon.