New Courts at South Cove Park

South Cove Park in Oconee County has new tennis and pickelball courts. Repairs were recently made to the old courts transforming them into practically new ones, tells Oconee County Parks, Recreation and Tourism Director Phil Shirley. “The tennis courts at South Cove, right as you enter the gates, we’ve been wanting to replace those for a number of years now. Tennis courts are an expensive asset, so it was about a $200,000 project. It is not money that we have sitting around, so we had to plan accordingly and get that run through the county priorities, but we have opened the tennis courts back up as of last week when they were completed. We used Tablet Tennis out of Georgia, they did a great job. We still have a few punch list items to go; we are going to put a windscreen up and we are going to build some benches, so that when you have your stuff out there you have somewhere to set it.” Shirley tells more about the work done on the pickelball courts. “The old court was a four-court tennis court and we took three of those tennis courts, refinished them and rebuilt them as three tennis courts and then we took the fourth court and subdivided it up and designed out four pickelball courts. Pickelball is an extremely fast growing sport, the demand around here is ever increasing and we wanted to be able to offer with that space a multi-purpose option, so now you can enjoy tennis as well as pickelball.” South Cove Park is a 48 acre park in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and located on Lake Keowee. Camping is located on a 15 acre peninsula offering 86 campsites with water and electricity on each site with 46 sites waterfront. Two bath houses serve the campground area and a dump station is located near the entrance of the park, which is located at 1031 South Cove Road in Seneca.