Repair Needs at Ojai Tennis Club Take Center Court

For more than 100 years, top amateur tennis players have whacked balls and sipped tea amid the genteel atmosphere of the Ojai Valley tennis tournament, an annual event where tradition has long held center court.

Trouble is, center court is beginning to show its age.

Five of the eight green asphalt courts in Ojai’s Libbey Park, where some of the finest tennis players in the West vie for top honors this weekend in junior and collegiate divisions, are cracked and badly in need of repair.

Short-term improvements have been made to keep the courts--some of which predate the Great Depression--safe and playable. But tournament officials fear Pac-10 schools will pull out of the event if the courts are not significantly upgraded.

“The standards for play are so high that we talk about that constantly,” said Bob Jarboe, president of the Ojai Valley Tennis Club, whose members have staged the tournament since it began in 1896.

Now, the club is proposing a $200,000 renovation project to replace the timeworn courts with new ones identical to those recently constructed at UCLA and Stanford.

The club also wants to add lights to the four upper courts at the north end of the park to extend tournament play and promote recreational use by Ojai residents year-round.

“The tennis courts are very old,” Jarboe said. “They were built many years ago and they have just gotten to the state of deterioration that repairing them has turned into an annual major resurfacing. We just need to rebuild them entirely.”

This week, just days before the 101st Ojai Valley tennis tournament got underway, the Ojai City Council pledged to set aside about $65,000 from its parks program budget to help fund the project.

Private donations from the tennis club and the Ojai Civic Assn. are expected to cover the remaining costs.

Final council approval is expected in late summer and construction would likely get underway during winter, city officials said. The goal is to have the new courts completed by the 2002 tournament.

Ojai City Manager Dan Singer characterized the proposal as a “no-brainer” for the city, which owns Libbey Park but turns the courts over to the tennis club each year in April for the four-day tournament.

“Any time you get community groups coming forward and saying we’ll shoulder two-thirds of the cost of a public-improvement project, its a pretty good deal,” he said. “We’re just thrilled.”

The proposed construction would tap most of the city’s $100,000 budget for capital improvements in Libbey Park, leaving only about $30,000 for other projects.

It would also shut down most of the park’s courts during construction. But Singer said the end result should be worth it.

In addition to upgrading the courts for local tennis buffs, officials say the improvements would ensure the continued success of the tournament, where some of nation’s best players have competed over the years. Pete Sampras, Lindsay Davenport, Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors--all graced the old courts as amateurs.

The tournament draws thousands of visitors to the city each spring--filling hotel rooms and packing local restaurants, he said.

“Obviously, this is an activity we want to continue to support,” Singer said of the tournament. “There will be some sacrifices. But subsequently we will be putting in courts that should last another 100 years.”

For Ojai tournament fans, the new courts would mark a substantial modernization for a historic sporting event considered the oldest amateur tennis tournament in the nation.

And, according to Jarboe, the improvements would bring the level of play into the 21st century.

“No more bad bounces,” he said.