After 97 Years, Ojai Is Brought Up to Date

Some things about the Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament will never change.

In its 97th year, the tournament is an enduring piece of history with its courtside oak and sycamore, and a list of past players that dates to Big Bill Tilden.

Afternoon tea is still served on fine china, just as it was in 1904. Fresh-squeezed orange juice is still poured each morning.

The townsfolk still volunteer to do everything from sell tickets to sweep courts. They are helped by students from nearby Thacher School, which established the tournament in 1896.

But behind the scenes of gentility and heritage, changes are afoot at “The Ojai.”

In a small office several blocks from the nearest court, workers hunch over a computer terminal. At this command post, they can access every match in the tournament, more than 700 at dozens of sites on the first day alone.

The moment a match ends, be it at Libbey Park downtown or Spanish Hills Country Club in Camarillo, an on-site official calls in the score.

Within seconds, the result appears on computer terminals at the tournament headquarters, its media center and its new web site.

Said Kurt Meyer, a Thacher administrator who helped coax the tournament into cyberspace: “Anybody can push a few buttons and everything is updated.”

“The Ojai” has gone on-line.

This streamlining has replaced much sweat and heartache. The results used to be handwritten by a roomful of students who no doubt wished they were back in class.

Sometimes tournament officials wished the same thing. “Sometimes the kids made mistakes,” an official said.

Players have also benefitted. Earlier this week, there were hundreds of “hits” on the web site as competitors checked times and locations of first-round matches. Tournament officials were spared hundreds of phone calls.

“They were very pleased,” said Jerry Holden, a Thacher staff member who worked with Meyer.

Computers cost money, however. So Ojai had to hire a “sponsorship coordinator.”

As a marketing executive for several professional golf tournaments in Southern California and Hawaii, Joe Berry has dealt with major corporations and television networks.

Ojai was another matter entirely.

“There are people who don’t agree with me coming aboard,” Berry said. “But I know the tradition here. It’s not going to be like some golf tournaments where you have 30 or 40 sponsors and you take the money and run.”

Starting small, Berry persuaded a local newspaper to sponsor fancier-looking tickets. Then he called upon some of his golf contacts: a fencing company agreed to donate its services and a telecommunications company laid cable for the nascent computer network.

By next year, he hopes to attract corporate sponsors to defray the $70,000 in annual costs. He talks about television and licensing. Again, he must move cautiously.

“I don’t want this to be corporate America,” Berry said. “My biggest thing is the integrity of ‘The Ojai.’ ”

Still, all these changes--the marketing executive, the talk of “multi-user data bases” and “web server capability”--is enough to raise fears that “The Ojai” is becoming, well, modern.

There were similar concerns a decade ago, when the traditionally staid Friday night dance hired a Top-40 band for entertainment.

Gerry Roe, a volunteer for three decades, smiled and said: “It will always be ‘The Ojai.’ ”

Which means they will always serve tea and fresh-squeezed orange juice. The thwock of tennis balls will always be accompanied by songbirds in the trees.

“It’s a funny little place because it seems like you’re in the middle of nowhere and then there’s this town where everyone comes out to watch tennis,” said Grant Elliott, a Stanford senior. “It’s like a tennis oasis.”

And there are some jobs a computer cannot replace. Especially the one that Thacher students dread the most.

“Ball person,” said Montana Easterling, 16. “You’re standing in the sun. It’s hot. In my freshman year, a girl got hit by a racket.”