Karen Quincy Loberg / Star staff Arnie Saul coached both the Ventura High and Ventura College tennis teams.

Although decades have passed since his playing days at USC in the late 1940s and lenghty coaching career in Ventura, tennis remains close to Arnie Saul's heart.

Today, the 1941 and 1942 CIF singles champion is 84 years old, lives in Ventura with his wife Ellen and occasionally visits tennis courts at Ventura College to watch matches. And, despite a troublesome left knee, Saul gets a little exercise. Although he no longer does so with a tennis racket.

"I'm a golfer and under the right conditions I play well," said Saul in describing what he mostly does with his time today.

But the sport in which Saul is most remembered is tennis, mainly because he coached three Hall of Famers. Before he started coaching, Saul was an outstanding high school (Hoover High in San Diego) and college player (at one he was time ranked No. 19 in the nation in singles and No. 10 in doubles at USC).

Saul still has a wealth of knowledge and interest in a sport he has been close to for nearly 70 years. Saul, who estimates he taught 1,000 players in Ventura during his coaching days, has passed along a lot of that knowledge to his students.

"The guy who taught me (Wilbur Folson in San Diego) gave more tennis lessons than anyone I know," Saul said. "He would start giving lessons at 8 a.m. and go all day, then string rackets until 2 or 3 a.m."

Some of Folson's passion for tennis clearly rubbed off on Saul, who came to Ventura in September of 1949 to coach the Ventura High and Ventura College teams when the two schools shared the same campus.

Saul's best pupils at Ventura High included Dick Gould, Tom Chivington and Ramsey Earnhart and all three are members of the Intercollegiate Tennis Hall of Fame. At Stanford, Gould became the winningest NCAA coach. At Foothill College in the Bay Area, Chivington became the winningest community college coach. Earnhart was an outstanding player at USC (a two-time NCAA doubles champion with Rafael Osuna), a CIF champion and now a teaching pro in Macon, Ga.

The 1990 inductee into the Ventura County Sports Hall of Fame has a lot of opinions and ideas about tennis and isn't reluctant to share them. Saul offered a few of his thoughts about what he sees going on in the sport today:

n On growing the sport: "To try to get kids to play tennis in a major sports town (like Ventura) is not easy. They ought to start Little League tennis. There are plenty of courts. It could work."

n On the pro game: "I think some of the women are missing the ball. Take (L.A. Sparks star) Candace Parker. What does she make, $50,000 to $60,000 (compared to the more lucrative purses on the WTA Tour)? Look at her athletic ability. If she played (tennis) her opponents would be looking at her and saying, What happened?' "

n On his amateur playing days: "There was no reason to play as a pro (in the 1950s). You could not make any money. When they opened the game to professionals (in 1968), that was the best thing they could have done."

Passing shots: The Oxnard Tennis Center Girls' 18 and under squad won the SCTA Junior Team Sectional Championships last weekend at the Home Depot Center in Carson. The doubles teams of Julia Maddux/Claire Willey and Sarah Zook/Candace Scholler dropped only eight games in four sets to help OTC beat Rancho Cucamonga 47-27 in the final on Sunday. Moira Hedberg and Sonia Landeros provided key singles wins on Saturday. ... The 2008 K-Swiss USTA National Men's 45 Hard Court Championships are continuing this week at Westlake Tennis & Swim Club. The semifinals are set for today and the finals on Friday. ... The Newport Beach Breakers will play their World Team Tennis home opener on Saturday against the Kansas City Explorers. Kaes Van't Hof, who won the Pacific-10 title at The Ojai, will be playing his first season for the Breakers. Camarillo's Mike and Bob Bryan will make four appearances for the Explorers this season, but not on Saturday. ... Brendon Josephson of Moorpark and Mitch Krems of Thousand Oaks are two of the 24 players selected by the SCTA to represent Southern California team zone (14s division) competition starting Saturday in Alabama.

— Keith Kropp writes on tennis for The Star. E-mail address: kkropp@VenturaCountyStar.com.