The 12 lighted courts at this facility are NOT FREE, and reservations are required, but the fees are reasonable, and the courts are in great shape. There are plenty of great free places to play tennis in Burbank, but I’m including this facility because this is where to go in LA if you want to play on clay. 

McCambridge Park, 249 Amherst Dr, Burbank, CA 91504

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From my diary

December 23, 2022

I imagined playing on clay courts would be like playing on Neptune, but it was really more like playing on Earth. The ground felt more natural, more forgiving than the usual hardcourt, which applies a light hammer to the kneecap every time you stop short or land after jumping. I thought the clay would similar to modeling clay, like you could craft a teapot in between sets, but it was more like soft stucco, not anything you could scoop up. The feeling was more abstract, like arriving at a truly level playing field.

These clay courts had all kinds of accouterments for upkeep — rakes, brushes, hoses — that I didn’t explore because we were playing at night; in fact, we shut the place down and had to ask the groundskeeper to unlock the gate for us so it didn’t wind up me and Z playing like zombies ’til we dropped.

It was almost like that anyway. We tied, 1-1, with Z coming back from down two set points in the first set to win it in the tiebreaker. Beanie off to him! He was tenacious and furthermore had no problem returning my hard flat serve. Since that was the case, I thought I would just go ahead and slice everything, but I could not conjure any otherworldly bounces off the clay that he couldn’t adjust to. Good for him, I say again. I like tenacious. I did come back to take the second set but as we all know, the second set in rec play is the consolation prize. Still, I was consoled.