"It looks like Roland Garros," Henson said, referring to the Paris stadium that hosts the French Open.
But Henson said it's a change for the better for those who play frequently.
"It's a lot easier on your body, a lot easier on your knees," Henson said. "At a lot of clubs in Florida that have clay courts, people play way into their 80s."
The conversion of two of the courts was completed in May, and two more were finished in June. The other two courts remain as hard courts, but club manager Mark Cassidy said they aren't nearly as popular as the new courts.
"If anybody comes to play, they generally go to those instead of the two remaining hard courts," he said.
And both Cassidy and Henson said more people seem to be coming to play.
"I think the play is definitely up this year," Henson said. "I think we have a lot more play on the surface. We have a lot of new members that are coming out to play on the clay."
The club's courts were in need of replacement, and Henson and some other members asked the management to consider something other than a traditional hard court.
"A bunch of us who have played on clay had been lobbying to get some type of clay court surface," he said.
SportClay court in use at DCC
He said the club considered a cushioned hard court surface like that in use at Centre College and also looked at conventional clay courts, but those were cost prohibitive.
The club chose the SportClay surface sold by a Pennsylvania company and got its new courts for only a little bit more than hard courts would have cost. Cassidy said the price difference was less than 10 percent.
"They gave us a big discount on the courts so they can use it as kind of a showcase for their product," Henson said.
The courts consist of two layers, with the top one surfaced with a mineral infill that looks like clay but is easier to maintain. It doesn't need water as clay would, and it doesn't blow away in the wind.
"The material is almost like a clay powder that gets dumped on, and once a day it gets brushed and groomed," Cassidy said. "It plays very similar to clay, but this had far less maintenance."
Henson said that after a rain, the surface is almost always ready for play much sooner than a hard court would be.
There are no other courts like them near here - Cassidy said the closest ones are in Florida and New York - and Henson said players are still getting the feel of them. He said the biggest adjustment has been learning how to slide into a shot, which is commonly done on clay but never on hard courts.
"It slides like clay, it probably slides even more than clay," he said.
