The Bryan brothers: From legends at The Ojai to all-time greats on the tennis court

Who could have known it at the time. I sure didn’t have a clue.

The year was 1992 and I was just a 22-year-old rookie sportswriter for the now-defunct, 10,000-circulated Camarillo Daily News fresh out of journalism school right over the hill at Pepperdine University. On the first day at my $300-a-week job, the sports editor on our three-man staff hailed me over to his cubicle.

“We have these 13-year-old identical twins from Somis,” Tom said. “Mom and Dad run the Cabrillo Racquet Club. Say they just got back from Paris and played some international event. Dad says we need to pay them a visit. Says they’re going to be something special.”

I still had years to go before my old-school newspaper cynicism kicked in and I actually perked up, interested in his suggestion. “Sure,” I said. “Tell him I’ll meet the boys tomorrow at the club.”

Little did I know then that brothers Mike and Bob Bryan who sat before me — in what would be the first of dozens of interviews — would turn out to be the GDTOAT — the Greatest Doubles Team of All-Time.

A year after my first byline in the Daily News, the larger Ventura Star-Free Press and its parent company, Scripps Howard, gobbled up the area’s five smaller daily newspapers and consolidated into one newspaper — the Ventura County Star.

I would now be joining a staff of 18, and at our first meeting was volunteered as the county’s tennis columnist — because no one else raised their hand.

That would mean covering The Ojai Tennis Tournament, an event I had only heard and read about growing up some 125 miles north on the Central Coast. This was the tournament started at the turn of the 20th century. A place where all the greats had played, including Jack Kramer, Bobby Riggs, Billie Jean King, Stan Smith, Arthur Ashe, and Jimmy Connors.

It took only one cup of freshly squeezed Pixie orange juice and I was hooked.

This is where I first got to witness the greatness of the Bryan Brothers for the first time. They rattled off doubles wins during my first year covering The Ojai, starting in 1993 in the Boys’ 16s doubles, and repeated that title in 1994.

In 1995, they played for Rio Mesa High School and competed against SoCal’s best in winning the Boys’ Interscholastic title, and doing it again in 1996. As a Stanford freshman in 1997, Bob entered and won the singles, and the sibling pairing led the Cardinal to the Thacher Cup team title.

In the spring of 1998, I had the idea to print an Ojai Tennis program and put the Bryans on the cover. I asked Mike and Bob if they would sign some copies and they happily obliged. I dropped off a box at the Stanford hotel where the Chantico Inn sits now on Ojai Ave and chatted up the boys as they sat in their boxers signing away.

They won the doubles again that year, playing their final match at The Ojai on Libbey Park’s Court 1, and they decided to turn pro shortly after leading Stanford to the NCAA Division I title in May 1998.

There were greater mountains to climb for the Bryans and myself. As they embarked on the pro tour that summer of 1998, so too did I take a leap, landing a job downtown for the Los Angeles Times’ Sports section.

I would run into the boys over the next 12 or 15 years at the L.A. Open, in Atlanta, and was there to witness their final Grand Slam win at the U.S. Open in 2014, while working for the USTA, and attended their final news conference. I kept in contact with their father, Wayne, and managed the public relations for the Bryan Bros. Foundation for a few years at well-attended events at Spanish Hills Country Club in Camarillo. I was at The Greenbrier in West Virginia during the COVID-19 pandemic working for World TeamTennis the night the Bryans announced they would be retiring from the game. Just last month I handled the public relations for the Netflix Slam in Las Vegas, where the boys played a doubles exhibition.

When word got around that this would be the year The Ojai — which starts Tuesday — would honor the Bryans, I got a little nostalgic thinking back on their career, and mine. All the times they spotted me and called me out during busy news conferences, yelling “The Prattster!” I would just smile and put my head down, a little embarrassed but proud that I had been along for the ride and a very small part of their incredible journey as the greatest doubles team to ever play the sport.

The Bryans will be the featured guests of honor at The Ojai’s annual fundraising event on Friday at the Ojai Valley Museum. In addition, the twins will take part in a junior clinic and doubles exhibition on Saturday from 8:45-10 a.m. at the Upper Libbey Park courts.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: The Bryan brothers: From legends at The Ojai to all-time greats