NEWPORT — Sun finally bathed the grass tennis courts at the Newport Casino over the weekend, and nobody could have been happier than Mark Stenning, chief executive of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and tournament director of the Campbell’s Hall of Fame Tennis Championships.

Nobody, that is, except Dan Robillard, head groundskeeper and the man responsible for preparing the courts for the week-long $500,000 tournament that starts Monday, and for members and guests who will play on them until the outdoor season ends in October.

The dreariest May and June in recent memory followed by deluges last week tested the patience and skill of Robillard and his staff. The stadium courts — excavated, tilled, leveled and re-sodded last fall — three tournament courts on the “front lawn” and three practice courts in the rear, were saturated.

“We used tarps, but there’s a space between each of the courts. Last Wednesday the water was running underneath the tarps. It was like a river. The soil couldn’t take any more water,” Robillard said Friday while praying the weather would break for two days of qualifying, Family Weekend and the main draw. He recalled a rainy June three years ago and said, “This is by far the worst.”

The Hall of Fame tournament is the only men’s professional grass-court event in North America and immediately follows Wimbledon. For years the pros coming from London complained that the Casino courts were softer and the bounces unpredictable compared to those at the All England Club. And that was when the Casino had been open and members playing for a month.

Conditions improved after Robillard arrived 9½ years ago, but he is prepared to hear complaints this week because the courts, especially on the front lawn, are saturated and soft .

“We need 1½ to 2 weeks for the ground to be ideal. The top two or three inches will dry out, though,” he said.

The Hall of Fame renovated the stadium courts because they were not level — there was a slight mound on each baseline — and because they held water as a result of accumulated thatch.

“That’s why they were always soft. Thatch turns them into a sponge,” Robillard said.

Last October, Sports Turf Specialties of Plainville, Mass., stripped the sod, tilled the soil to a depth of eight inches, laser-graded the entire surface and laid a carpet of bent-grass sod, the same variety used on golf greens. The old sod was a mixture of rye, fescue, bent grass and poa annua.

Laborers applied a dormant fertilizer, and the new sod rooted before winter cold set in.

In the spring, Robillard and his crew rolled the new turf for two weeks to smooth out any high and low spots. They mowed, starting at one-half inch and working down to one-quarter inch. A golf green can be cut to one-eighth inch. They were on schedule until mid-May.

“Then the rains came, and they haven’t stopped,” Robillard said. He added that when the courts do dry out, they will play a lot better than they previously did.

“But with the soil saturated, there will not be ideal conditions,” he said.

In a normal year Robillard’s crew would have been double-rolling, double-cutting and irrigating by early June. Not this spring.

FACTS AND FIGURES:

SITE: Newport Casino

SURFACE: Grass

START: 11 a.m.

PURSE: $500,000; winner, $79,000; runner-up $41,500

DRAW: 32 singles, 16 doubles teams

SEEDED PLAYERS/RANKING: 1, Mardy Fish, U.S., 25; 2, Fabrice Santoro, France, two-time defending champion, 37; 3, Sam Querrey, U.S., 47; 4, Benjamin Becker, Germany, 49; 5, Arnaud Clement, France, 53; 6, Philipp Petzschner, 55; 7, Kevin Kim, U.S., 86; 8, Sergi Stakhovsky, Ukraine, 90

MONDAY FORECAST: Sunny, 70s, light breeze

TICKETS: tennisfame.com; 866-914-3263