TournaMini Ballport Tennis Ball Pick Up Hopper

This small carrier is great for practice. It holds around 30 tennis balls or 21 Pickleballs. (Pickleballs are larger than tennis balls). Also while the hopper can hold Pickleballs they won’t squeeze through the bottom like a tennis ball, so you can’t pick up Pickleballs in the same way you pick up tennis balls by just setting the hopper on top of the ball.The handles easily flip around and snap into the side of the basket to become a stand (30.5” tall) so it’s easy to reach in and feed balls. Also the top of the basket has rods that slide to open or close to hold the balls in the basket when the basket is turned sideways.This is the right amount of balls for practicing a serve or drilling with friends. If I was running a tennis clinic for a small group I would want the larger hopper that holds around 70-80 balls.Very happy with this light weight hopper as I like to ride my bike to the court. I attach the hopper on its side to my bike rack with a bungee cord. I put two tennis racket in one pannier and use another bungee cord to secure the rackets around the hopper basket.Note: The hopper basket does have a strong plastic odor for the first week, so I keep it in the garage.

I bought one of these small ball hoppers two summers ago for my then 52" tall daughter to use, as our larger all-steel, 72-ball Wilson hopper was too heavy for her. The design is great but the quality was so poor that it became non-functional. However, I found I could fix it with minimal home-handyman skills and not too much effort, so my Mini Ballport is once again working adequately.DESCRIPTION:The Tourna Mini Ballport hopper is easy to assemble and takes all of about 5 minutes to screw the sides and one end together, insert the legs/handles, insert the top and bottom rods into the slots on the bottom and grooves on the top, then screw together the second end to secure the whole hopper. The fully assembled hopper weighs about 3-4 pounds and stands 30.5" tall. I didn't specifically count, but I think it does hold just about 36 balls.The legs rotate up easily to form the handles for carrying or picking up balls and rotate down again, locking easily into place to serve as legs. One picks up balls by raising the handle up, positioning the bottom of the hopper over the ball, and then forcing the hopper bottom, which is hollow with two rods running across it slightly narrower than the width of a ball, over the ball, which, when compressed, will fit in between the rods when squeezed, and then enters the bottom of the hopper. In normal conditions, a non-compressed tennis ball will be slightly wider than gap between the rods and won't fall out the bottom.PROS:- Light weight and easy for kids to carry and handle- Holds about the right number of balls for a quick warmup to practice serving- Easy to use- Excellent service from Tourna - I called them to request an extra bottom rod (see below) and they instead sent me entire new Mini Ballport a few days later.- When it's working properly, it works very well.CONS:- Poor overall quality of the plastic sides of the hopper. Whether it is from a materials defect or a manufacturing defect, most of the flat black plastic panels that are screwed together to form the hopper box are warped and bend outward (and unfortunately, one cannot swap them 180 degrees - they are one-sided). This creates a larger gap between the sides than there should be. The two sets of rods (the bottom ones are fixed in place, the top ones fit in a groove and can slide open for use on the court and closed to keep balls from rolling out) are supposed to be held in place by friction and pressure from the box sides fitting tightly. The warped plastic results in the space between the sides being too wide to hold in the rods securely. On my first Mini Ballport, as I was walking to the court, I noticed a ball hitting my leg as it fell out of the bottom of the hopper and when I looked, I saw that one of the rods had fallen out since the warped sides were too far apart to retain it securely. I never found that rod and had to contact the manufacturer.On the second, replacement hopper, the sides were also warped, but not quite as badly as the first. I did not trust the bottom rods to remain in place, so I glued them in and in two years of use, they have been fine. However, I could not glue in the top retaining rods, which need to slide in the groove from open to closed and the distance between the rods was too wide, so sometimes one of the rods would come loose. This spring, I noticed this problem happening frequently and after looking closer, discovered that the plastic on one side at the corners where one screws together the sides had broken off. I will have to glue this back together.- Does not hold enough balls for a typical practice session - I find that when I'm using this hopper instead of my larger Wilson one, I'm picking up balls twice as frequently. However, this is a function of fitting one's intended use to the item's stated specifications, so to be fair, this is really more of a user preference issue than any shortcoming with the product itself.CONCLUSION:I cannot recommend this product to be used as intended by the manufacturer, as the quality of the component sides of the hopper was so low and inadequate. However, I can give it a qualified recommendation if one is willing to forego the possibility of disassembling the hopper for storage and glues it all together permanently. If the rods are securely retained, it works very well for picking up and storing balls..APPENDIX - HOW TO FIX AND OVERCOME MANUFACTURING FLAWS- First, assemble the hopper using just the supplied screws to see how it fits. Maybe you have a better-made unit than the two I got and everything fits securely. If so, I would use something like Gorilla Glue, to glue into place the two bottom rods so they won't fall out.- If your hopper side and end panels are at all warped, I'd glue the hopper panel edges together, too, immediately prior to screwing the box together. This will strengthen the overall construction and it will be less likely that you will suffer the broken corner piece where the screw hole is located, as I did.- If you have lost a rod from your hopper, take one of the other rods out, take that rod to your local hardware store, and buy a length of brass pipe the same diameter as the rod to make a replacement rod (a wooden dowel might not be strong enough in that diameter). I think I paid something like $2-3 for the pipe. I measured a length on the pipe to be slightly longer than the stock rod for added security, cut it with a hacksaw, and then glued it into the bottom of my first Mini Ballport, so I now have two fully functioning Mini Ballport hoppers. If you lost a top rod or the rods are not long enough and keep falling out because your side panels are warped, maybe add a good 4mm - 3/16" of extra length or even more to the length of the replacement rod you are cutting, and the longer replacement rod should not fall out of the groove.

Exactly what I wanted for a good price

I bought this hopper due to its light weight and ball capacity. I'm a casual recreational tennis player and just wanted something to help me practice on my own in-between drills and matches. I also purchased 36 Penn pressureless tennis balls for practice. The bottom roll bars worked fine with both the pressureless tennis balls and regular pressurized ones. It occasionally becomes difficult to pick balls up if other balls already in the hopper become wedged against one another. The hopper holds 36 pressureless tennis balls if you pack them in there tightly -- you may need to make some minor adjustments to the balls to get them to all fit.I like the design of this product but the manufacturing is disappointing. It is clearly a product that is churned out as cheaply as possible with little regard for quality. For example, the handles are meant to lock into place in two different positions for standing the hopper up or using it to pick up balls. Because of the poor manufacturing, the handles don't lock into place solidly. This makes the handles less stable which can result in the hopper toppling over with wind gusts. The low-quality was also apparent while assembling the hopper. The included instructions are very basic and inadequate -- just a little effort here could make it much easier to assemble. Also, while assembling, my hands got what felt like painful fiberglass micro-shards in them. I had to wipe all the parts down with a damp cloth to get the fiberglass shards off of them.Overall, I still recommend this product due to its convenient size and light weight. I wish there was a higher-quality, comparable product -- I would gladly pay a little more for it.

Arrived two days earlier than expected; nice surprise. No instructions on YouTube on assembly. Taken 30 minutes instead of the 10 minutes stated on simplified paper instruction without picture illustration. All worthwhile nonetheless as carefulness has resulted in not having the panels snapped together the wrong way. Original colour box photo is paramount too in helping with how it should look when assembled. Light compact weight; great! My puppy likes it too!

Perfect, easy to assemble. Just the size and ball capacity I was looking for.Note that due to its size, the basket is not really stable when too windy.Very happy customer.

The Ballport was quite easy to assemble, robust with some excellent design features. It is a really neat size and light weight to carry, also if it falls over during transport the balls stay inside. Also like that you can use it to pick up the balls by simply placing the Ballport over them - saves bending over! A really good buy.

This ítem came with barely any instructions and it took ages to put together, it even looked like it was going to break! I don't like receiving flat packed ítems that have no proper instructions included. Now that it's been put together it's ok but i wouldn't recommend it.

Very useful, perfect size (you'll never need a larger one unless you are a coach (or want to look like one)Good build quality and easy assembly