The Indian Wells Tennis tournament, sometimes called the “Fifth Slam,” sees the very highest professional tennis played anywhere, similar to Wimbledon or the US Open. But the “BNP Paribas Open,” as Indian Wells is formally called, is also a zoo: some 440,000 people attended this year, and the parking and crowds are off-putting. Indian Wells is an ordeal for these reasons, in my experience.
But The Ojai Tennis Tournament is different. It is much smaller and more approachable. It involved not just a few hundred participants in the pro tennis tour, as in Indian Wells. The Ojai sports tennis players all the way from juniors to community college to Division 3 players to Pac 12 NCAA teams to an “Open Division” (ie. lower-level pros). True, the tennis at The Ojai (even the PAC 12 teams) are two or three levels below the pros at Indian Wells, but you can park 200 yards away from the tennis and the crowds are manageable. There is also the school spirit aspect to college tennis which I enjoy at The Ojai. You see the crowd yelling their campus cheers. The Trojan students yell, ”We are – SC!” The Bruins chant their “UCLA eight clap.” These are young people playing for their schools, not pro athletes playing for themselves. I prefer the amateur vibe.
It is different with the professional athletes. I remember watching in person Ivo Karlovic lose to Yoshihito Nishioka at Indian Wells in 2017. During the match I suspect Karlovic was thinking about the money he needed to make to pay his mortgage, and the ranking points he stood to forgo, as he was losing the match. Indian Wells seemed mercenary. It was about money, career, and status. The players are flying out of the area as soon as possible after they lose. “Warm up the G6 Learjet,” Roger Federer is thinking to himself in frustration, going down to defeat on the pro tour, “I want to be out of here in two hours!” Amateur tennis is different from professional tennis. The college players seem much more innocent and appealing in playing for their school. The UC Berkeley fans and players chant to their players: “Go Bears!” The University of Arizona supporters say, “Go Cats!” or “Bear down!” Yes, the tennis at The Ojai is of a lower quality but it is still pretty damn good. And you are not mobbed by people, like at Indian Wells. You don’t spend thousands of dollars.
This year was the 121st iteration of The Ojai Tennis Tournament. The Thacher School, in particular, has deep roots with this tennis tournament. Normally I have generally negative feelings towards Thacher. It has always seemed to me pretty much a (mostly) rich kid boarding school, convulsed by self-lacerating sex scandals in recent times. The place is very much the elite “woke America” private school – wealthy and privileged, highly-educated and very-liberal. Reader, think of Stanford or Harvard University, and the Thacher School shares the same sort of sociopolitical monoculture. You get the picture.
But Thacher also has a long tradition of noblesse oblige at The Ojai Tennis Tournament, coming from its long genteel past in the Ojai Valley. The tennis tournament has always been completely run by volunteers ever since its start in 1896. Nobody has ever been paid money to help organize it; this is impressive, and even a bit amazing, taking into account how relatively large the event is. In this environment, Thacher has contributed much over many years. The school offers its tennis courts to early round matches. Thacher also has a tent staffed at the event every year near the main show court, and they give out free tea you can enjoy at the tables they service. “Giving out afternoon tea for relaxation and conversations – how old-school retro cool!” Thacher volunteers also walked around handing out complimentary fresh squeezed orange juice from the local orchards. It is a nice touch. The Thacher people I met last weekend were incredibly hospitable. And the Thacher people at The Ojai were working for free, unlike anyone at Larry Ellison’s ultra expensive professional tennis tournament in Indian Wells.
I have other personal reasons for esteeming The Ojai Tennis Tournament so highly. I live in Ventura, California. So Ojai is only 30 minutes away by car. Almost all the persons operating the tournament are local tennis people known to me personally, and when I am there I run into friends and acquaintances new and old. As far as I have a tribe, these people are it. It is a gathering of the similarly-minded. There is a sense of community and fellowship.
Also, I am a high school teacher whose calendar is the academic one. The Ojai takes place in late April, and this is an optimistic time of the school year: May is right around the corner, and I can see the end of my school year just beyond the horizon and summer vacation awaiting. I console myself in the darkest days of “Farch” (the unhappy months of February and March smashed together) – when students and teachers are exhausted and cranky – that if I can just make it a few more weeks then The Ojai will arrive. The arrival of this tournament is a reward for having weathered the hardest part of the school year. It is always a happy moment when the tennis officially commences at Libbey Park.
Finally, I have a long history of attending The Ojai with my daughters. It is an annual family event for us which pleases. You can view the below photos of my daughter Julia and I at The Ojai to witness change over time:
Going back 123 years to 1896, The Ojai has had a long run. The tennis tournament did not even skip a beat during World War II. But they did cancel it for two years because of Covid-19, which shows just how feckless, thin-skinned, risk-averse, and even cowardly our country has become in recent years. The event is held entirely outside in the open air, and so The Ojai never was going to be a “super-spreader event” of Covid. But the California authorities canceled it (and all college tennis) for two years anyway. Panic, fear, hysteria.
The Ojai Tennis Tournament has not since rebounded to pre-pandemic levels of attendance, unfortunately. Lots of Americans still seem settled into their routine of staying home, avoiding crowds, and living life vicariously in staring at screens by themselves. I call this, “Isolated and lonely America, fragile in its mental health, and angry about almost everything.” In my last posting, I referred to the United States as stuck in a sort of “middle-school sociodrama.” It is not confidence inspiring. In contrast, America holding The Ojai Tennis Tournament in mid-1944 as the nation prepared for the D-Day landings is inspiring.
But enough.
I love The Ojai Tennis Tournament. I attend every year. During the two pandemic years I bought two crates of tennis balls they could not use because the tournament had been canceled, hoping to help soften the economic blow for them. During the next twenty years in late April I hope to park in my habitual spot in Ojai near the corner of N. Ventura St. and W. Matilija St., and walking two minutes away into Libbey Park to watch the contestants in The Ojai. I hope to enjoy the easy California spring weather, and to think back about all the previous years with my daughters, friends, and fellow tennis fans. Even as I grow elderly, I will regard all these young people competing on the tennis courts, and reflect on the next generations who are the future and have so much potential. Maybe it will leave me feeling less “old.” We shall see.
But I will always look forward to The Ojai Tennis Tournament.
May it continue another 123 years.
