A Perfect Match: Tennis and Ojai

It took more than 100 years, but the people who run the oldest amateur tennis tournament in the nation finally traded in their living rooms for a real office.

They’ve even got a home page on the Internet.

But that’s about it for modernization at The Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament, one of the largest amateur tournaments in the country.

In this event, built on tradition since the late 1800s, most things never change. People like it that way.

“It’s sacred to many people,” said Joe De Vito, Ojai’s mayor pro tem and president of the Ojai Valley Tennis Club for the past five years. “Being that this is such an important tournament in the tennis world, it would have been very easy to commercialize it. But the people that run this tournament don’t want that to happen. They want the tradition to remain here.”

Take the year someone suggested organizers actually charge money for the traditional, fresh-squeezed Ojai orange juice served every morning, and the tea and cookies served in a Libbey Park tent every afternoon.

Or the year a large company offered cash for the right to put its name atop the downtown tournament sign that stretches across Ojai Avenue.

Suffice to say the juice, tea and cookies served under the stately sycamores and oaks of Libbey Park remain free.

And nothing more than a plain green-and-white sign stretches across downtown, with nary a corporate sponsor in sight.

This is the tournament a whole city built, more like a community project than the prestigious tournament it has become.

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Year after year, the people in this bucolic city of 8,075 people make The Ojai happen.

More than 600 volunteers--including 200 students from Thacher High School, the private school where the tournament was born--do everything from the planning to the ticket-taking to the cleanup.

To handle the hundreds of players in the early rounds today and Friday, 30 homeowners in the Ojai Valley have opened up their stately houses and backyard tennis courts, along with public and private courts across Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo. Dozens of residents open up their guest rooms to host junior players.

The tournament has been a community effort since its inception.

Ojai Valley residents use words like “pride” and “special” when asked about the volunteerism that underscores The Ojai.

“When you look at the number of years the tournament has been going on, it’s become a civic event,” said volunteer Heidi DiCapua as she filled out tournament draw placards in the office across from Libbey Park.

“It’s a tremendously hospitable tournament, unlike anything else you see today,” said Gerry Roe, the tournament’s volunteer publicist.

This is the 97th time that the tournament has been played; it has been played in all but five years since it began.

In 1928, hoof and mouth disease kept horses and buggies from carrying players and spectators up the hill to Ojai. The tournament also was canceled four times during World War II.

The Ojai was the brainchild of William Thacher, a Yale graduate and tennis champion who moved to the Ojai Valley to help his brother, Sherman, run his new private school.

Tony Thacher, William Thacher’s great nephew, said Sherman tried to get his brother to leave his tennis rackets and white court threads behind. Ojai was a place for hard work and horses, as the story goes. Not tennis.

But William Thacher had other ideas. Armed with chicken wire and dirt, he carved out a tennis court on the school grounds and challenged tennis players in Ventura to a match in 1895. The tournament evolved into a challenge between the best tennis players in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, then the best in the region, then the state.

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This year, the tournament will draw about 1,400 of the best amateur players from grade school through college from across the western states. Regarded as one of the top junior tournaments in Southern California, The Ojai also is home to the Big West, Pacific-10 and community college championships.

More than 25 finalists at the Ojai have gone on to win Wimbledon, including tennis greats Bill Tilden, Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Jack Kramer, Tracy Austin, Bobby Riggs, Pancho Gonzalez, Maureen Connolly and Jimmy Connors.

“Part of the charm of this tournament is you get to rub shoulders with the players,” said Tony Thacher, who has been volunteering since he was about 10. “Everyone is together. It’s a social event as well as a competitive sports event.”

Binney Moss remembers when a young kid named Michael Chang played in the backyard court she and husband, Hal, have opened to the early rounds of The Ojai for the past 20 years.

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He was one of many talented young players at the time, or, as she puts it, “Michael Chang was just Michael Chang.” At age 17, he won the French Open and today is ranked No. 3 in the world.

Moss, who also is the tournament’s treasurer, just had the screens around the court redone, and plans to put out tables and chairs for coaches and guests much as she does every year.

The Ojai could not have survived so long without the volunteers, she said.

Aside from the umpires and match officials, there still is no paid staff. Virtually all the nonprofit organization’s revenue comes through tournament entry fees and ticket sales, she said.

This year, the organization spent $9,000 to resurface the courts at Libbey Park where all the finals are played Saturday and Sunday.

“It’s just a special thing,” she said. “It’s just part of Ojai.”

Coro Yuja and her husband, Raouf, have opened the tennis court behind their six-bedroom California ranch-style home for the last four years, drawing crowds of 40 or 50 strangers to their backyard last year.

Coro Yuja had a hard time keeping visitors from wandering through her backyard, with its colorful landscaping, panoramic mountain views and poolside barbecue pit and bar, complete with underwater bar stools.

This year, the couple built a shower and bathroom into their five-car garage, the better to keep the strangers out of the family loo.

Yuja, who hails from Italy and Spain, said the kind of volunteerism that makes The Ojai so special could never be found in Europe.

“When I go there, they don’t understand this business that you do things for free,” she said. “That is America.”

On Tuesday in the tournament’s new office, tournament secretary Caroline Thacher scrambled through piles of scheduling paperwork and wished the phone would stop ringing. Tournament draws were to be announced that afternoon, and every few minutes, someone else called for an update.

“What division is this?” she asked one caller. “. . . and your name? . . . Yup, you’re in.”

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“We don’t have any times until noon” she tells the next caller, who phones less than a minute later. “If you could call back then . . .”

For the first 18 years Caroline Thacher did this job the headquarters was run out of her pingpong room and kitchen.

It wasn’t exponential growth or some financial windfall that put organizers in an office this year. It was luck. After 50 years, the Ojai Festivals Thrift Shop closed. Just a stone’s throw across Signal Street from Libbey Park, the spot was ideal. So now they have an office.

Indeed, it may be a better place to organize such a prestigious tournament, but from all appearances, it is no less hectic.

Oh, she’s tried to retire and pass on the torch. But the rule with The Ojai is that before volunteers can retire, they’ve got to find and train their own replacements.

“I retired 10 years ago,” Thacher said with a laugh, “but unfortunately my replacement took flight to Alaska and has never been seen since.”

What’s so unique about The Ojai is that few tournaments have so many age groups, she said, as she fielded yet another phone call and clicked on the answering machine.

There are 34 divisions, 10 of them for juniors. And with all the junior division finals played at Libbey Park on Saturday, the top young players can find themselves shoulder-to-hip with college stars who may be on the professional tennis tour within months.

Perhaps for the first time in their careers, young players step onto courts with ball boys and girls, and referees who announce the scores . . . and their names.

In a sense, Caroline Thacher said, the tournament helps young players feed their dreams.

“They enjoy playing, seeing others and being seen,” she said. “It’s just a real jubilant atmosphere. Everybody is having a good time.”

And the orange juice, tea and cookies are still free.