Which court is biggest? A bar argument, settled

Our tennis social had finished. It normally does at about nine o'clock. Some people disappear off into the night, and others hang around in the bar for one drink before heading home themselves.

On this occasion the padel group and the squash group finished at about the same time. A social, or it might even have been a competitive match. And somebody in the bar was overheard asking why you can't play padel on a squash court.

The squash players were adamant. It's not big enough. A squash court is smaller than a padel court. And a padel court, they added, is smaller than a tennis court.

Well. The padel players were keen to point out that a padel court is so much smaller you can fit two of them on a tennis court. Which is exactly what's happening when court 11 is refurbished.

Jon got upset. Not entirely about the courts, he said. When they've finished refurbishing court 11, the patio out the front will be half the size, and our noses will be touching the fence while we have our beer in the summer.

Then the squash coach piped up that you could get four pickleball courts on one tennis court. This really upset the tennis captain, because everybody seems to be coming for another tennis court at the club.

So, after some short, sharp words about which sports are taking over which bits of the club, we were still none the wiser about how big any of the courts actually are. We were, however, very clear on everyone's favourite.

One of the younger members, as they do, asked why we didn't just look it up online. We all said we're trying not to, so that we remember things and use our brains. But it was true. None of us really knew. So the phones came out. Some opened up the chatbot, some Googled, and that's how we came across RacketWiki.

Every racket and bat sport. The rules, the court sizes, the brands. Exactly what we needed, and the whole argument was settled in a few clicks. Which was a shame, really, because I was quite enjoying the banter, even if some of it got a little personal. It's fair to say most people at a racket sports club are pretty competitive. That's why they joined a racket sports club.

For the record:

• Tennis, 23.77 m by 10.97 m. Or 78 ft by 36 ft. The biggest of the lot, as the tennis captain will be pleased to hear.
• Padel, 20 m by 10 m. Smaller than tennis, as the squash players said.
• Pickleball, 13.41 m by 6.1 m. Or 44 ft by 20 ft.
• Badminton, 13.4 m by 6.1 m. Also 44 ft by 20 ft. So pickleball and badminton courts are exactly the same size, and that centimetre is just the rounding. Nobody asked. I enjoyed it anyway.
• Squash, 9.75 m by 6.4 m. Or 32 ft by 21 ft. The smallest. So no, you can't play padel on a squash court. The squash players were right, and they'd like that minuted.

You'll notice only one of those comes out in round metres. That's because the others were all laid out in feet and inches. Tennis, badminton and squash date from when Britain did everything in feet, and pickleball is American, where they still do. So their metric figures were always going to look untidy. Seventy-eight feet is a perfectly sensible number. It just isn't a sensible number of metres. Padel is the only one here that was measured in metres from the start, which the padel players will no doubt add to their list of reasons it's the future.

Two padel courts on court 11 will fit, apparently, as long as Jon gives up half the patio. Whether four pickleball courts fit on a tennis court depends on how much room there is around it. The website doesn't cover patios.

While we were on there, somebody looked up how each sport serves. In padel you bounce the ball and hit it at or below waist height. That started a new argument about whose waist.

Same time next week, then.