Drive between Oconee Veterans Park on Hog Mountain Road and Herman C. Michael Park in Bishop, and until recently you'd find the same thing waiting at both ends: a set of tennis courts. That is changing, and the change has been two decades in the making.
Oconee Veterans Park is about to get 16 new lighted tennis courts, tripling its current count from eight. Herman C. Michael Park is moving the other direction, converting its tennis courts into a pickleball complex. The two parks sit just across Hog Mountain Road from each other, and for years they duplicated each other's racquet sports. They are now sorting themselves into specialists: OVP for tennis, HCMP for pickleball. If you've been splitting your court time between the two, you're about to need a different routine.
Why This Took Twenty-Two Years
The 16 additional tennis courts at Oconee Veterans Park aren't a new idea. They showed up in the park's original 2004 master plan as one of the facility's core buildouts, planned in clusters on either side of the existing eight courts. The money to build them was supposed to come from the 2015 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, but county Parks and Recreation Director Lisa Davol told the Board of Commissioners in 2022 that funding got redirected to build three multi-use fields instead, a call made to meet demand for soccer and multi-sport space at the time. The tennis expansion went back into the queue and was folded into the 2021 SPLOST cycle.
That's the part a casual visitor to OVP would never guess by looking at the courts today. The eight you can play on right now are the same eight that have been there for years, still waiting on the expansion that's been sitting in planning documents since before most of the county's newer subdivisions existed.
This year, the wait started closing. Oconee County Parks and Recreation secured a $500,000 grant from the USTA Southern Enhanced Build It Forward program, with an additional $10,000 contributed by USTA Georgia, specifically earmarked for the Oconee Veterans Park Tennis Court Expansion project.
"The support of USTA Southern through the Enhanced Build It Forward grant of $500,000 will make a significant impact on tennis playing opportunities in Oconee County," Davol said. "Funding will be used directly for the Oconee Veterans Park Tennis Court Expansion project that includes adding an additional 16 lighted tennis courts, additional parking, restrooms, and infrastructure, as well as resurfacing and relighting the existing eight courts."
That last detail matters as much as the new courts. The eight courts you've been playing on are getting resurfaced and relit as part of the same project, not left as the older half of a two-tier facility. When this is finished, OVP won't have eight old courts and 16 new ones. It will have 24 courts on the same surface and lighting standard.
Herman C. Michael Park Stops Being a Tennis Option
While OVP consolidates as the county's tennis anchor, Herman C. Michael Park has been moving toward the opposite specialty. The county's master plan calls for converting all eight of HCMP's outdoor tennis courts, along with its two youth courts, into a 12-court pickleball complex, eight of them lit. Part of that shift has already happened. The two youth tennis courts got a makeover and two pickleball courts were added there before the broader conversion was ever formalized in the master plan.
If you've played tennis at Herman C. Michael Park because it was closer to home than the drive out to OVP, that option is going away as the rest of the conversion plays out. If you've played pickleball there because the county hadn't built you a dedicated space yet, you're getting one, and a fairly generous one at 12 courts.
The practical effect is that the county isn't adding total racquet-sport capacity in a scattered way. It's concentrating tennis at one park and pickleball at another, so residents end up choosing a destination based on sport rather than proximity. For a county where OVP and HCMP have functioned somewhat interchangeably for casual players, that's a real shift in how you'll plan a match.
What's Where, Once the Dust Settles
- Oconee Veterans Park (3500 Hog Mountain Road, Watkinsville): 24 tennis courts once the expansion is built, all resurfaced and lit to the same standard. Also home to the county's Bark Park, a two-mile paved walking loop, and a 34,000-square-foot community center with an indoor track, fitness area, and gymnasium.
- Herman C. Michael Park (1051 Elder Road, Bishop): a planned 12-court pickleball complex, eight lit, replacing what used to be eight tennis courts and two youth courts.
Neither project has a confirmed completion date attached to the current funding announcements, so the practical advice for this fall is the same advice that applies to any active construction zone: call ahead or check the county's facility listings before you load the car with racquets, especially if you're headed to OVP expecting all 24 courts to be ready at once. The resurfacing of the existing eight courts alone means some of what you're used to playing on will be out of rotation while work is underway.
The Rest of the County's Court System
None of this happens in isolation. Oconee County Parks and Recreation runs several other facilities that don't figure into the tennis-pickleball split but shape how residents think about where to play. Bogart Sports Complex, tucked behind the Bogart Library, has no major changes planned in the current master plan, so it stays a steady option if you want fields without construction noise. Harris Shoals Park in Watkinsville offers water play alongside its walking trails, which matters if your household includes kids who need something to do while the adults finish a set. None of these compete with what's happening at OVP and HCMP. They're simply the other pieces of a park system that residents tend to move between depending on the week.
What ties all of it together is a county that's been patient about a plan first sketched out in 2004, watched its funding get reassigned once, and is now finishing it with help from outside the county's own tax base. That's not a story you'll find on a parks department flyer, but it's the reason the courts you drive past today look the way they do, and why the next time you show up at either park, you should expect something different than what you left.
If you're weighing a move within Oconee County and want a read on how a specific neighborhood sits relative to parks, schools, and daily commute, that's the kind of local detail Holly Purcell Group tracks closely. Reach out anytime you want a grounded, no-pressure conversation about what's changing in the areas you're watching.
