A fine history for Stanley Park Open
CITY TRADITION: Annual event has survived 84 years and is one of the world’s biggest public tennis tournaments
One of the most under-appreciated sporting events in this city started last Friday night at the Stanley Park tennis courts and the event has withstood everything from dreadful roots coming up through the asphalt surfaces, to budget problems, to nesting cranes.
Throughout the 84 years it’s been running, the Stanley Park Open always has been touted as either the biggest or one of the biggest public tennis tournaments in the world. And while it’s changed a little, with more international competitiveness and International Tennis Federation points, it still has the same feel.
My very first assignments as a cub reporter were at Stanley Park, where the big boards of all the different divisions with their respective draws were stacked up like giant canvasses waiting for the artist.
When the men’s open round of 16 would be reached on a Wednesday or Thursday night of the last week, there would often be up to 3,000 people crowded around to see some of the best players the city has ever produced go at it for very little prize money, especially when compared to today.
And often there would be great emotion from both players and fans, the gentile nature of the sport in the early ’70s briefly taking a vacation to allow the steam to escape.
Who can forget the days of Ken Dahl, still a great seniors player who played out of public courts, taking on the well-to-do kids, who got all the coaching at the Vancouver Lawn Tennis & Badminton Club?
Those players included Bob and Tony Bardsley, the latter at one time Canada’s only touring professional player at 6-foot-4 and with a booming serve, his toughest local matches often against his brother who taught in Vancouver schools for years.
Dr. Bob Puddicombe was in this mix as well when it was your agent’s beat and “Pud” was often the best of the bunch and always so well mannered. And there was Don McCormick, who’s still a tyrant on senior circuits around the world, such is his love of the game.
Grant Connell won the tournament in 1985 before going on to become an outstanding ATP player, the best doubles player in the world and Canada’s Davis Cup captain.
Current touring pro Philip Bester won in 2010 and 2013, USC star Ric Bengtson from West Van in 1984 and before that John Picken, who’s still an outstanding seniors player, seemed to win it every year for a time.
In fact, the seniors events back in the early ’70s were a walk through tennis history, as the draws included many of Canada’s early Davis Cup players, whose retro pictures perhaps still grace the hallowed walls at VLTBC.
Former Vancouver mayor Jack Volrich was a very serious competitive player and Bob Moffatt played the park before becoming executive director of Tennis Canada.
The women’s event was just as colourful, the always impeccably mannered Hana Brabenec perhaps the most memorable from those days, just because of the elegance she brought to the court every time she played.
Rebecca Marino played as a junior, before reaching No. 38 in the world and going toe to toe with Venus Williams at the U.S. Open, and many other Federation Cup members could be seen hammering away, including ’86 winner Marjorie Blackwood, ’84 champion Wendy Pattenden, three-time winner Renata Kolbovic and, more recently, new tournament director Khristina Blajkevitch, who still hasn’t given up dreams of making a run at a WTA career.
Since 1931, the event has been held pretty much every year at this time, to varying degrees of interest, mostly declining given all the other distractions today.
But now Blajkevitch and former pro and Tennis B.C. executive director Mark Roberts, who won in ’80 and ’81, are trying to recapture some of the magic the tournament once held.
And when somebody like Blajkevitch, who’s just out of college tennis, has that much respect for the tradition of the event, you’re dealing with someone special, someone with some appreciation of things that make this city special.
Whether it’s possible to pull off this revitalization remains to be seen, but they’re going to be giving it the old promotional try. And if that doesn’t produce the desired results, there will doubtless be other approaches. Given the lavish history of this classic Vancouver event, you have to wish them luck.