Game, Set--No Match

Fans and players coming here this weekend either to watch or participate in the 96th Ojai Valley Tennis Championships probably won’t notice Grayson Rogers.

But the people of Ojai consider the 85-year-old tennis buff a local gem.

Ojai is the oldest tennis tournament in the United States, and Rogers is widely recognized by event officials for having attended more of them than any other spectator.

For that, the Ojai committee is planning a small ceremony at Libbey Park on Saturday morning for the quiet, 5-foot-1 retired Hollywood stuntman who has come to these courts regularly since 1914.

“We have regulars of all ages at those courts, and they all know Grayson,” said committee member Bill Huffman, 66, whose idea it was to honor Rogers.

“I’ve always looked up to him,” Huffman added. “He’s an inspiration. He links us with our past. He can remember how things used to be and the relationship between tennis and the community.”

Rogers still has vivid memories of men and women who played at Ojai long before Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, before Joe Louis laced up a pair of boxing gloves, and before Babe Ruth was traded from the Red Sox to the Yankees.

Time and tradition have been very important at Ojai since the first tournament in 1896. Since then, not too much has changed about the town or the tournament. Rogers can attest to that. He has lived in Ojai since 1914 and he has either played in, watched or volunteered in more than 60 Ojai tournaments.

“It’s very picturesque here,” Rogers said. “It’s still a village. It never became a city. I find several people who played here as youngsters who came back here to retire. It impressed them that much.”

Some of the game’s greatest have played at Ojai, including Jack Kramer, Pancho Gonzalez, Maureen Connolly, Arthur Ashe, Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King.

Yet Ojai always has been a nonprofit, amateur event, existing only through the efforts of hundreds of local volunteers.

Joe Bixler, past president of the Southern California Tennis Assn. and a former Ojai director, said Ojai would lose much of its luster without people like Rogers.

“He just seems to give continuity to the tournament,” Bixler said.

Rogers is a two-time champion at Ojai, winning titles in men’s doubles and mixed doubles in the “Old-Timers” division in the mid-1950s.

He won despite a physical handicap.

Rogers lost his left hand in a stunt accident when he was 25, but that did not deter him.

“I never stopped,” he said, “because I liked the game so well, and I figured it was something I could keep on doing.”

Rogers has volunteered numerous times, whether it was taking tickets at the gate or officiating a championship match. But Rogers can be found almost any day at Libbey, where he has become as much a part of the park as the trees and the soil.

He watched Bill Tilden play at Ojai a few years before he won Wimbledon championships in 1920 and ’21. Later, Rogers discovered Tilden lived next door to his mother in Hollywood.

Dorothy (Bundy) Cheney, the 1938 Australian Open champion, was a regular at Ojai. Rogers remembers how she played while pregnant, against her doctor’s advice.

“Played a Western game,” Rogers said. “Quite a bit of topspin. And a very nice person.”

Rogers also remembers a disagreement he had with Arizona Coach Myron McNamara, a friend and doubles partner. McNamara pointed to Jimmy Connors, then an underclassman at UCLA, and said he had star qualities.

“I didn’t see what he saw in Connors,” Rogers said. “[Connors] was always in there pushing, pushing, pushing. He was a fighter.

“A lot of players were like that, but Myron could see a difference.”

Among the greats, nobody made a bigger impression on Rogers than Tracy Austin, who won at Ojai before she became, at 18, the youngest player to be

ranked No. 1 in the world.

“Her strokes and her positioning were almost perfect,” Rogers said. “She seemed to anticipate every shot. The whole town was out to see her. I had a hard time finding a seat.”

On Rogers’ list of favorites are names that have been obscured by time: Jack Tidball, who won Ojai’s All-Comers Challenge Cup from 1936-39; USC’s Rafael Osuna, whose life was cut short in a 1969 plane crash, and the oddly unsuccessful Cliff Herd.

Rogers recalls Tidball appearing almost comical with a fast windup on his serve, and he loved the way Osuna unnerved opponents by creeping halfway to the net as they served.

And long before Goran Ivanisevic--he of the 130-mph serve--there was Herd.

“He had a serve that was so much bigger than anybody else, he kept knocking the rackets out of their hands,” Rogers said. “But he never won the tournament.”

He’s a fan of the twins Mike and Bob Bryan of Camarillo, members of the U.S. Junior National team who will vie for their fourth consecutive doubles championship this week.

“They’re making a name for themselves,” he said.

While the Bryans might be destined for stardom, Rogers has tried to keep a low profile since his days as a tap-dancing comedian in a two-man, traveling vaudeville act prior to the Great Depression and as a stunt man who specialized in falls.

But everywhere he goes in Ojai, people say hello.

And occasionally someone will spot Rogers at the weekly farmer’s market in Santa Barbara, where he sells fruit and vegetables from his 1.4-acre ranch, and say, “Didn’t I see you at the Ojai tennis tournament?”

Generations of Ojai tennis players have befriended Rogers at the Libbey Park courts.

“He helped me when I was a kid,” said Russ Sperry, 54, who became a teaching pro. “And now I help kids. For that, I think he exemplifies the spirit of Ojai.”

Sperry, a systems analyst for Ventura County, doesn’t underestimate Rogers’ influence on him. When Sperry was looking for work in 1972, Rogers hired him to help build the large two-bedroom house in which he lives.

“Grayson’s just amazing,” Sperry said. “He has one hand, and he built the thing one brick at a time.”

Rogers lost his hand in 1935 on the set of a Western movie when a muzzle-loading rifle exploded after he pulled its trigger.

For the past 60 years, Rogers has played tennis with a soup ladle strapped to his left arm. A tennis ball fits perfectly in the ladle, allowing him to toss the ball while serving.

Six months shy of his 86th birthday, Rogers can still hit a slicing backhand and has a live serve.

“He plays as good as, if not better than, a lot of people in their 30s and 40s,” said Ivan Berkowics, a frequent playing partner. “He can wear me out.”

Rogers might be one of Southern California’s best players in the 85-and-over division. But he’s never bothered to find out.

“People ask me why I don’t go and play in my age bracket,” he said. “I may try it one of these days.”