The new tournament director for the Odlum Brown VanOpen may be South African by birth, but it didn’t take him long to plant his feet firmly on the North Shore and hold court as one of the major players in the local tennis scene.
Rik de Voest first came to Hollyburn Country Club to play in the VanOpen pro tennis tournament in 2005. He remembers that Andy Murray played in that same tournament. He also remembers taking on 16-year-old Philip Bester of North Vancouver, who is now officially retired after his run at this year’s VanOpen came to an end this week.
But what sticks out most about that tournament is the moment he first met a North Vancouver woman named Carolyn, who was then the director of athletics at Hollyburn.
One year later the two were firmly entrenched as a Hollyburn power couple, and de Voest was crowned the 2006 VanOpen champion.
“Everything was just falling into place,” said de Voest this week, taking a quick quiet moment away from his hectic 17-hours-a-day schedule as tournament director to reminisce about where it all started. “I’d been here a lot over the past year training and playing here at Hollyburn, so I liked the courts. I had a lot of hometown support both from members of the club and also through the knowledge that I was dating Carolyn. It just kind of all came together. And then winning the title was something special and unique.”
One year later he and Carolyn were married. In 2014 de Voest became an official resident of Canada, and the couple now have two young children under the age of four, a son named Morgan and a daughter named Georgia.
Along the way de Voest picked up two more VanOpen titles in doubles and moved to North Vancouver for good, his family settling down in the Grand Boulevard area. He retired in 2014, playing his last ever match on the Hollyburn Centre Court at the VanOpen to cement his status as one of the tallest pillars of the tournament.
Now a real estate agent, his unique status in the VanOpen community made him an obvious choice to act as tournament director when the event rebooted this year following a one-year hiatus.
“It ended up being a really good fit,” he said. “This was the event where I met my wife, and where we settled down, and where I finished my career, where I had most of my success and also where I live. There was all those factors that played into it.”
The tournament needed new blood after longtime chairman Floyd Hill and tournament director Ryan Clark stepped down, moves which led to the cancellation of the 2016 event. The rebooted tournament is now fronted by de Voest as well as longtime tournament housing co-ordinator Carlota Lee, now the event’s chairwoman.
“She’s done a fabulous job,” de Voest said of Lee, who runs much of the business side of the tournament while de Voest concentrates on the on-court product. Lee’s work expanding the tournament’s housing program over the past decade is one of the major reasons the VanOpen has become a favourite stop for many players even though it is not a top-level ATP event.
“All other tournaments around the world, you get put in a hotel,” said de Voest. “Players always joke that you spend nine months every year in a hotel room, and every room eventually looks the same. When players come here we try to put them up at some of the members’ houses. They open up their houses to the players, and in West Vancouver the houses are pretty nice, so players end up staying in these wonderful homes.”
Spoken like true real estate agent. With his own business to run as well as this new role of tournament director added to his summer calendar, de Voest is now a very busy North Vancouverite, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. The VanOpen is without a doubt his favourite tournament, and North Vancouver is his home.
“I’ve travelled the world, been to many, many cities, and Vancouver is obviously one of the best,” he said, adding that he’s happy with how the revived VanOpen has gone so far and excited to see it continue to grow in the future.
“I think for the most part we’ve done a pretty good job,” he said. “We’ve been fortunate with the weather. Hopefully we’ll just continue to tweak some minor things and just put on a great event.”
The VanOpen wraps up this weekend with the women’s doubles final scheduled for Saturday and the men’s doubles and men’s and women’s singles finals running on Centre Court Sunday starting at noon. For updated draws and results visit vanopen.com.
