Why the numbers are hard to find
Tennis coaching in the Hamptons is priced by the coach, the club and the month, and almost nobody publishes a rate card. The clubs that teach the most lessons here put their programmes on a page and their prices in a booking portal or a PDF brochure; the coaches who teach at private courts quote on the phone; the national cost guides give averages that a Hamptons parent will never see. This guide puts what is public in one place, says which figure is local and which is not, and does the arithmetic from a rate to a summer. Every figure is 2026 unless dated, Hamptons where a Hamptons figure exists and New York or national where not, and the sources are at the end. Where we could not find a number we say so rather than invent one.
Private lessons
| Market | Rate | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Hamptons, published | $175 weekday; $190 weekend or holiday | Ross School Tennis Center, East Hampton, 2026 |
| New York coaches | $65–190 a lesson; named coaches $100–150 | a lesson booking site’s New York listings |
| National average | $113; range $62–204 | Thumbtack’s 2026 cost guide |
| Coach listing examples | from $40 to $125; New York from $95 | individual listings, not averages |
Ross is a school tennis center with six Hydro Har-Tru courts open to the public, and its rate is the only Hamptons private-lesson price on a public page we found. The coaches we refer quote around it in season, higher for a club head pro or an RSPA Elite Professional who prepares tournament players, lower for an assistant pro or a college player home for the summer. A semi-private lesson, two players of similar level sharing the hour, is priced per player by the coach; no Hamptons club publishes that rate, so we do not.
Groups, clinics and camps
Junior groups and adult clinics are priced by the club and none of the Hamptons clubs publishes a per-session figure. What is published is camp: Future Stars’ 2026 rate table has its Southampton location at $1,045–1,595 a week (the tennis academy at the top), its East Hampton tennis track at $1,095, and its other Long Island sites at $495–1,050, with extended day $50–85, lunch $75–100, transport $250–290 at select locations, $50 a week off for three or more weeks and $25 off after the first sibling. Hampton Racquet’s kids’ camp runs June 1 to September 4, 2026; SPORTIME Amagansett’s East Hampton Sports Camp pairs daily tennis with swim; Southampton Racquet Club’s camp includes a complimentary membership; Sag Harbor Tennis runs a camp at Mashashimuet Park. The Town of East Hampton runs youth clinics at Lt. Lee Hayes Youth Park in spring, summer and fall, registered online, at fees the page does not state.
The court
| Court | Cost |
|---|---|
| Montauk Downs State Park (6 Har-Tru; mid-May to October) | $44 an hour; $24 for members |
| Village of Southampton courts | $25 individual / $75 family season permit + $150 refundable key-fob deposit |
| Town of Southampton courts | no tennis line on the 2026 fee schedule (basketball and bocce $20 an hour; lights $40) |
| Town of East Hampton courts (Springs, Amagansett, Montauk) | fees and hours not published; rules posted, including “no unauthorised commercial activity” |
| Mashashimuet Park, Sag Harbor (8 clay, 2 hard) | not published; run by a nonprofit and operated as Sag Harbor Tennis |
| Hampton Racquet, 2026 summer membership | $3,000+ individual; $6,000+ family |
| Southampton Racquet Club, 2026 membership | from $2,547.13 individual; $3,770.11 couple; $4,321.84 family |
| SPORTIME Amagansett | seasonal membership for unlimited court time; non-member instruction with a surcharge |
If you have a court, the lesson is the coach’s hour plus, sometimes, travel. If you do not, the court is the second bill and the first question we ask.
What a coach pays, and what you should ask for
The RSPA, the Racquet Sports Professionals Association, is the former USPTA. Its four levels cost the coach $249 to apply plus $235 a year (Instructor), $499 plus $335 a year (Professional), $129 for the Elite upgrade with on-court testing, and nothing for Master Professional beyond ten years as an Elite and 80 hours of specialty study; dues include on-court liability insurance for teaching (not professional liability, not the coach’s own injuries), and the RSPA sells optional facility, assistant and abuse-and-molestation cover for $110, $135 and $60. The PTR, the Professional Tennis Registry, is the other certifying body; its website would not load for us, so we do not quote its terms. A certification is not a background check. The US Center for SafeSport’s core course takes about 90 minutes and its trained status lasts 12 months; USTA runs its own Safe Play screening, whose pages would not load for us. We ask every coach for a current screening and a current certification card, and so should you.
Equipment
A junior racquet runs $35–59 at ages 3–5 (17–21 inches), $30–99 at 6–8 (23 inches), $69–159 at 9–10 (25 inches) and $99–159 from 11 (26 inches); an adult racquet $169–309; court shoes $80–180; a restring $40 in labour plus string; a regrip $10; a case of 24 cans of balls $85–130. These are one national retailer’s current ranges, not the market’s floor and ceiling.
What moves the rate
- The coach. A head pro or an Elite Professional at the top; an assistant or a summer college player at the bottom.
- The month. July and August are the booked months; a coach with a free Tuesday in June has one because it is June.
- The court. Yours is free; a club’s is a membership; a public one is $44 an hour or a permit, and some public courts do not allow paid instruction without the town’s say-so.
- The format. A private is the coach’s full rate; a semi-private splits it; a group shares it; a camp week buys fifteen or more hours at the lowest hourly cost in the sport.
- Travel. The fork is 40 miles long. A coach based in Southampton teaching in Montauk is charging for the drive whether the line says so or not.
Adding it up
A summer of weekly private lessons at the published Hamptons weekday rate, twelve lessons from mid-June to early September, is $2,100; on a rented public court at Montauk Downs, add $528 for twelve hours; on a Southampton Village permit, add $25. A child’s summer as two camp weeks plus a weekly group is $2,190–3,190 in camp fees at the Southampton rates before the group. A family membership at a club with court time, $4,322–6,000+, replaces the court line for every lesson the family takes and adds the clinics. None of these are quotes; all of them are the order of magnitude a proposal should sit in, and if yours does not, ask why.
Sources and method
The Hamptons private-lesson rate is Ross School Tennis Center’s published 2026 rate card; the New York range is TeachMe.To’s New York listings; the national average and range are Thumbtack’s 2026 cost guide; the camp rates are Future Stars Camps’ 2026 dates-and-rates table; the court and membership figures are Montauk Downs State Park’s page (New York State Parks), the Village of Southampton’s 2026 tennis court permit application, the Town of Southampton’s 2026 Parks and Recreation fee schedule, the Town of East Hampton’s tennis information page, Mashashimuet Park’s and Sag Harbor Tennis’s pages, Hampton Racquet’s and Southampton Racquet Club’s membership pages and SPORTIME Amagansett’s site; the certification figures are the RSPA’s certification and insurance pages; the SafeSport figures are the US Center for SafeSport’s courses page; the equipment ranges are Tennis Warehouse’s category pages. This sheet was researched by fetching those pages directly; USTA, the US Open and New York State’s health department blocked every fetch, which is why the guide prints no USTA guidance, no US Open date and no PTR fee. The full sheet, with every source, confidence rating and named gap, is ops/research/tennis-facts-2026-08-26.md. Nothing here is a quote; the coach you hire sets the rate.