The Ojai Serves Up Tennis and Tradition

As the self-appointed dress-code enforcer, Robert H. Morrison Jr. considers bare-chested men a gross affront to the decorum of the nation’s oldest amateur tennis tournament.

“Some of them say, ‘I don’t have a shirt,’ and I tell them they’d better go out and find one,” Morrison said after playing shirt cop to one young transgressor.

As it has for nearly a century, gentility reigned Sunday at the finals of the 92nd Annual Ojai Tennis Tournament.

On four courts ringed by majestic oaks, many of the nation’s top amateurs put on a show in Libbey Park for a polite, respectful audience that took time off for afternoon tea. The Ojai is frequently called the American Wimbledon, with a degree of classiness, but little pretension.

“It’s a lovely environment and the quality of tennis is excellent,” said Laura Katz, 44, of Ojai, who attended the 1985 Wimbledon professional tournament in England. “It’s a very pleasant ambience.”

“This is not stuffy at all. It’s absolutely beautiful,” said Martha Schrotenboer, 74, of Palo Alto, attending her first Ojai tournament after 10 years touring the country in a motor home to catch the NCAA men’s and women’s finals. “I’m not going to miss another one.”

More than 10,000 tennis fans attended the four-day tournament, including nearly 3,500 people Sunday. Nearly half that crowd was dressed in tennis wear, as if ready to take the court themselves.

They came to watch the finalists among the tournament’s 1,501 players, who competed in a total of 1,858 singles and doubles matches, in divisions ranging from 14-and-under to the Pacific 10 collegiate championships. In the first day of elimination rounds Thursday, 706 matches were played on public and private courts throughout Ventura County.

Stanford University student Alex O’Brien won the Pac-10 men’s singles finals and Stanford’s Sandra Birch captured the Pac-10 women’s singles championship.

For the spectators, The Ojai’s traditions were as big a draw as the top amateur players. As is the custom, the audience was served tea in china cups at 2:30 p.m. The December freeze disrupted the serving of the traditional morning beverage, fresh-squeezed orange juice from area growers.

“We normally get local oranges at cost, but this year we’ve had to sneak in concentrate,” confided Morrison, who along with being shirt cop is a member of the tournament board and its past president. “We’re hoping it’s California OJ, but I think it may be from Brazil.”

Outside the temporary fencing, the Ojai Lions Club offered up a more pedestrian menu available from two food stands, including hamburgers, hot dogs, tamales, soda and candy. In contrast, the Ojai Lioness Club, working at a nearby table, offered spinach salad, raw veggies, fresh fruit and sun tea.

“A lot of people in Ojai are vegetarians, so we decided to serve healthier foods,” said Lioness Club Treasurer Barbara Kresge, whose group began offering the alternative fare in 1985.

As he has been for nearly 30 years, Alan Rains was the keeper of the cups. The sterling silver trophies under his guard date back to the tournament’s beginnings and are engraved with the names of such past winners as Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith and Billie Jean Moffitt (King).

Stanford’s women’s coach, Frank Brennan, whose team heads to the NCAA championships in less than two weeks, said The Ojai is a superb warm-up for his players. It’s a relaxing precursor to the harried national championships, he said. “This isn’t commercialism run rampant,” said Brennan, a veteran of the last 12 tournaments. “We all come to Ojai to recharge the batteries, sip some orange juice, and then, off we go.”