Family maintains ties to La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club

Long Beach residents John and Audrey Cardall and their son, Jake, have a common thread that ties them to La Jolla: the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club.

Jack and Audrey honeymooned there 60 years ago and have returned regularly for vacations ever since. Jake applied for a job there when he was a San Diego State student. He’s been employed there 24 years now.

The Cardalls celebrated their 50th anniversary and their 60th anniversary last weekend at the beach and tennis club, dining at The Marine Room and staying in the hotel. The experience, said Jack, was just as much fun as it was way back when, though admittedly a “tad” more expensive.

“Sixty years ago when we stayed there, it was $10 a night,” he said, adding that the room they were given, overlooking the hotel’s main court, was sumptuous.

“I said to Audrey, ‘Don’t unpack, we’re going to be moving tomorrow.’ We went down the next day and said, ‘We’re going to go now.’ They said, ‘No, that’s your room.’ We stayed 10 days for $10 a night. It was wonderful.”

How much does a comparable room at the club cost now? “About $560 a night,” answered Jake, who supervises the club hotel’s front desk.

Jake had his own interesting story to relate about the club. Nearly a quarter-century ago, he had been working at a paint store in San Diego and didn’t like it. It was Jack who suggested to Jake that he ought to try and get a job at the beach and tennis club. “At that time in the mid-’80s when they hired you, you had to interview with everybody, the front desk, food and beverage, reservations and general managers,” Jake said. “I had to talk with Bill Kellogg (now president). Even though I had no hotel experience, they hired me because I had experience working with people.”

Jake Cardall said the beach and tennis club is little different than it was when he first hired on or when his folks honeymooned there. The overall philosophy of “super friendly staff” of the establishment certainly hasn’t changed.

“Most hotels you don’t get that kind of personal attention and service we give our guests and members,” he said. “It’s a small hotel. You get to know people’s names.”

Jake’s dad agreed that the club hasn’t changed much over the years.

“The pool is the same, the restaurants are the same,” he said. “There are more tennis courts. It’s still one of the most beautiful spots in the whole world.”

There’s something about the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Clubs that keeps, and will keep, the Cardalls coming back.

“We’re going to spend our 70th and 80th wedding anniversaries there,” vowed Jack.

Originally opened in 1927 as the La Jolla Beach & Yacht Club, Frederick William Kellogg bought La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club in 1935 and turned it into an oceanfront resort attracting out-of-towners as well as La Jollans. His son, William Scripps “W.S.” Kellogg, was the driving force behind the resort’s success as a tennis and vacation destination. Under W.S.’s stewardship, the Marine Room restaurant was completed and a nine-hole, par-3 golf course and extensive landscaping at the main entrance were added.

Today, operation of the club, Marine Room Restaurant and the neighboring La Jolla Shores Hotel and Shores Restaurant is in the hands of a fourth-generation family member, William “Bill” J. Kellogg.