Bob Ogle

Bryce Alderton

Sitting under an umbrella overlooking one of the Balboa Bay Club

Racquet Club’s 24 tennis courts, Bob Ogle wonders how life can get

any better.

The head professional and general manager has been a mainstay on

these grounds since he began playing tennis at age 10.

The Newport Harbor High graduate and University of Houston

All-American in 1973 remembered the day in the fall of his senior

year in college when he got a call from then-head professional Don

Leary about being an assistant.

The previous summer Ogle filled out an application and gave it to

Leary, who months later called back, saying there was an opening as

an assistant.

Ogle took the job and has been at the club ever since.

“How could I ask for a better place to work?” Ogle said, peering

west across courts on a pristine, sunny Southern California day with

the Pacific Ocean on the horizon. “My neighbors don’t think I go to

work because they see me going off in shorts. I never feel like I go

to work.”

Ogle was promoted to head pro in 1980 and has been the club’s

manager for the last seven years.

He has scaled back his teaching schedule to concentrate on duties

that come with being a manager, such as promoting membership and

organizing social events, but recently has begun to play singles in

Southern California Tennis Association senior division events.

“It is a report card to see if I can hit the ball under pressure,”

Ogle said with a smile. “I have been playing about four SCTA events a

year.” In August he will play in the Pacific Southwest tournament at

the Palisades Tennis Club in Newport Beach.

Before August arrives, Ogle and Gail Glasgow, hired as the junior

program’s head administrator, will be preparing the next two weeks

for the 14th annual War by the Shore Junior Tennis Classic July

21-25. Though the tournament runs about the time some players are

competing in national events, Ogle said the crop of juniors that

annually enter the junior classic provide glimpses of talent.

“The kids are great and the level of tennis gets better each

year,” he said. “Hopefully we provide a visible entity in the

neighborhood, but there is enormous competition out there.”

When he was solely a teaching pro, Ogle would travel to the

tournaments his students would play in. But with his increased

workload and a desire for the younger coaches to gain experience in

tournament settings, the 50-year-old father of two and husband stays

at the club more so than in years past.

Ogle has seen the club go from six courts in the mid ‘70s to 24

toward the latter part of the decade, when tennis experienced its

“boom.”

“You would walk into a grocery store and almost every person was

in shorts and a shirt,” Ogle said of people’s rush to tennis in the

late ‘70s. “We had people lined up on every court waiting to play.”

As with many sports, fluctuations in interest exist and Ogle

doesn’t see anything different in tennis.

“In the late ‘70s, the [United States Tennis Association]

estimated 40 million people were playing,” he said. “In 1985, there

were 18 million.

“People went to other sports. Tennis is tough on the body with

your body pounding on the concrete. It is cyclical, so you will start

to see people coming back to tennis.”

Coming back to tennis has never been a factor for Ogle since he

never really left the game that surrounded him at a young age,

beginning with his family. With the influence of his father, Bob Ogle

Sr., mother, Peggy Van Horn, brother Tim and sister, Peggy McKay, Bob

took an immediate liking to the game and has developed a devotion to

it.

The enthusiasm still emanates from his face.

“It’s addictive,” Ogle said. “It made me want to work hard for the

next week to beat the guy in the next town.

“I am still good friends with some of my college teammates. Just

recently we went to a concert together. The bonds you form make the

game enjoyable. It is the sport of a lifetime.”