Tennis, Tea and Tradition Once Again in Ojai

Written by: Staff on 25th April 2012

Tennis, Tea and Tradition Once Again in Ojai |

Diehard Southern California tennis fans have a unique love affair with every last weekend in April. For 112 years this time of year has marked the playing of The Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament, an important Southern California sectional event for open, collegiate and junior players.

The Ojai also serves as the Pac-12 Championships with the men moving to a team dual-match format this year with the women staying an individual event. For the first time this year, 10sBalls.com is proud to be a sponsor of this Southern California tennis treasure, which started in 1896 some 90 miles west of Los Angeles.

The first day of action ended on Wednesday with just one 40-minute rain delay, but both scheduled men’s dual matches were completed with Washington beating Arizona and Utah toppling Oregon. The winner of the Pac-12 Championships will receive the Pac-12 Conference’s automatic berth into the NCAA Division I national team championships in May. UCLA is the top-seeded team followed by USC. The finals are set for Saturday at 4 p.m.

The Ventura County Star’s tennis columnist Keith Kropp is one who is looking forward to the new team format: “Let’s be honest — this is a major change,” he wrote. “It is comparable to golf and, say, the Masters switching from stroke play to match play. There will be an adjustment phase for fans, no doubt about it. Gone are the days of navigating through a 32-player singles draw, projecting potential late-round matches between contenders.

“The competition will be just as intense, if not more so. It will also be loud. Yes, you’ll hear the players — specifically urging their teammates who are playing matches on adjacent courts.

“So what can we make of all this? Well, we know the Pac-12 men’s division will definitely be under heavy scrutiny the next few days. But the wise thing to do is to hold off judgment to see how everything works.

“It is important to remember that all college teams play dual matches at this time of the year. So it makes sense for the Pac-12 to play this format at The Ojai, so long as it does not disrupt the rest of the tournament. The team format makes college tennis fun and can be great theater. This can turn out to be a great move for The Ojai.”

We at 10sBalls.com think so too.

10sBalls.com friends Thomas Shubert and Artem Sitak are both in the prestigious men’s open 32-player draw, which will begin play on Thursday.

Local Ventura County residents and tennis pros Paul Steele and Todd Dickey were part of 16 qualifiers who moved into the main draw. Steele, who is 51 years old and the director of tennis at Sunset Hills in Thousand Oaks, gets No. 2 seeded Sitak of New Zealand in the first round Thursday at 12:30 at the Ojai Valley Inn. Dickey is the boys’ tennis coach at local Nordhoff High in Ojai.

Prize money totaling an all-time high of $20,000 will be awarded in the men’s and women’s Open divisions in singles and doubles. Once an amateur-only tournament, The Ojai began offering prize money in the Open division in 2003.

The Ojai features competitions in 27 different divisions and includes more than 1,500 junior, high school, collegiate and adult players at more than 30 sites throughout Ventura County, including private courts in Ojai.

You can follow The Ojai on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheOjaiTennisTournament and on Twitter @TheOjai.

Topics: 10sballs.com, Arizona tennis news, Artem Sitak, Keith Kropp, Pac-12 Championships, Paul Steele, Southern California tennis fans, Sports, Tennis News, The Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament, Thomas Shubert, Todd Dickey, UCLA tennis news, Utah tennis news