This weekend, the California Cup returns to America’s Finest City, and, when it’s over, the players representing San Diego’s Tennis Federation (SDTF) hope they will have bucked an annoying trend. The last three stops the Cup has made here, the team from Los Angeles has won and the team from San Diego has finished dead last.

The “Cal Cup” as it is now called, is an annual tennis tournament that rotates between one of the three participating cities each year: San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

The tournament is a California tradition for gay and lesbian tennis players.

Scott Williford, co-captain for this year’s squad, said the tournament was originally designed “to highlight some of the best known gay tennis players in the world at that time.”

Writing for the SDTF’s Baselines newsletter, Williford said, “When the Cup first was held, there were really only two other organized gay tennis clubs outside of California that held open tournaments – Houston and Dallas. There was no ‘GLTA’ (Gay and Lesbian Tennis Association), no ‘gay tennis circuit,’ and only one division – ‘Open.’ In 1985, SDTF proposed to the [San Francisco and Los Angeles] clubs that we play an annual three-way team match that would earn one city the ‘bragging rights’ for gay tennis in California for the year.”

Williford is an expert on the subject. He was one of the original founders of the SDTF and of the California Cup.

The tournament includes 24 singles players and 12 doubles teams from each city competing in matches during the weekend. Each match won earns a player or team one point. The winners take those points and add them to their team’s total. The city team with the most points at the end of competition wins the tournament.

Playing host to the tournament during its inaugural year in 1986, Team San Diego won by a healthy 15-game margin, and repeated the victory three years later when the Cup returned. Those were the last wins San Diego enjoyed while hosting the event. Eighteen years have passed since the local boys made good, and this year they remain “hopeful,” Williford says.

“We believe in our team,” he said in a recent interview, “and we remain hopeful [we can win].”

Tournament play begins Saturday, Oct. 6, with 48 singles matches starting at 9 a.m. and ending around 4 p.m. On Sunday, competition will focus on the 48 doubles matches, also from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Matches will be held at Barnes Tennis Center (West Point Loma Boulevard) in Point Loma and admission is free.

“About 30 players are representing San Diego this year,” Williford said. “And they’re all good players.”

Williford said competition in the cup “is expected to come down to the last doubles matches on Sunday afternoon” before the winner is determined.

If history is any example, he’s right. While the Los Angeles Tennis Association (LATA) has won seven of the last nine tournaments held in San Diego, in all but one case, it was by a slim margin. With the exception of Team San Diego’s inaugural win in 1986 and the tournament in 1998, where LATA enjoyed a 12-match cushion, each time San Diego has hosted the Cal Cup, no more than five matches separated first and third place.

So close are the competitions, so frequent the back-and-forth of wins and losses, that in 1992, LATA’s first Cal Cup win in San Diego, LATA tied with the host team at 33 matches each. It was a tie-breaker of actual games won within the matches that crowned LATA the winner.

For more information about the Cal Cup, visit www.sdtf.org. Click on the tournaments link at the top of the page and scroll down to Cal Cup.

Get out there and root for the local team.

As Williford said, “LATA is favored again this year, but sometimes the team that wins is the team with the loudest fans.”