PROVIDENCE - Another Rhode Island tradition has ended.

Dick Ernst, founder and director of the R.I. Metropolitan Tennis Championships, is stepping aside. The tournament itself will continue this year but with a different look.

Larry Sack, executive director of Serving Providence Organized Tennis (SPOT), which operates the Todd Morsilli Tennis Center at Roger Williams Park, plans to run the sanctioned Met A with a draw capped at 32 and without prize money for the winner and runner-up. Sack has run the B and C divisions for two years. The 2008 tournament is scheduled for Aug. 22-24.

The Met has been a staple on the New England circuit for 43 years and at times was the largest tournament in the region. It is the third-oldest tournament in New England after the New England Sectional, which started in 1886, and a Quincy, Mass., event that began in 1939.

Ernst, the irrepressible tournament director, historian, promoter, player and coach, is leaving his carnival on clay because, as he freely admits, he is computer illiterate, and the game's organization is more computer-driven than ever. Also, he is healthy after recovering from a herniated disk and wants to play for a ranking again. He will turn 70 in September and wants to travel to senior tournaments with his wife Rollie, who plays in the 65s. And he no longer wants to chase players for accurate USTA membership numbers, hustle to find sponsors and worry about the weather.

"Playing has always come first," Ernst said recently in an interview. "In my later years I want to devote my tennis time, other than coaching, to playing. Being 70, I don't have much longer to play."

Playing tennis is why Ernst founded the Met in 1965. The Rhode Island Closed and the Rhode Island Open were the big tournaments in the state, and Ernst wanted another event at the park between the bookend tournaments.

"It evolved into much more than that," he said. Indeed, it did. Ernst added B, C and women's divisions in the early 1980s, and the number of entrants swelled to more than 300.

"I can't imagine that I was able to do that. . . . It was a thrill to see how many I could get," he said.

With the Todd Morsilli junior tournament attracting 300 kids in its prime in the 1990s, Roger Williams Park was a summer tennis destination.

The Met A, or open, was Ernst's baby. In good years he had draws of 64. Players entered because they liked the tournament, wanted a ranking or desired the prize money. Locals entered because it was easy. International players showed up as they passed through the area.

"The rest came from the hours and hours of phone calls I made," Ernst said.

College stars came to the park to prove their game was as good as their reputation. Thomas Blake of Harvard won in 1997, and Jamie Gresh of Barrington and Penn State triumphed in 2001. Rhode Island teaching pros Tad Connerton, Bruce Werchadlo, Sedge Gray and Yuri Stetsenko answered the challenge over the years and won. Equipment reps Peter Lyons and Charlie Osborn demonstrated they could swing as well as sell their racquets and won. Lawyers Bernie Boyer, Greg Boyer, Nate Chace and Joe Cavanagh made their opening and closing arguments on the clay and won.

Jules Cohen of North Kingstown, the dominant Rhode Island player in the late 1950s and '60s, reached the finals of the first four Met tournaments, winning in 1965 and 1966 and losing to Ned Weld of Weston, Mass., in 1967 and 1968. Weld won again in 1975, 1977 and 1978, making him a five-time champion in five tries. Gordie Ernst, Dick and Rollie's second son, won six times from 1982 to 1995 and was runner-up twice. Gresh, the hard hitter from Barrington won five times.

Fathers and sons heading for the annual championships at Agawam Hunt and Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline, Mass., detoured and played doubles for the 20 years Ernst sponsored that category.

Ernst played the Met himself 40 times. He lost to Cohen in the 1966 final, his only appearance in the championship match. He was a six-time semifinalist.

"I'd be out there in the semifinals, and someone would come up to the fence and ask what time they were playing or 'Can I have a line judge?' " he recalled with a grimace. "At this stage of my life, all the pressures of a tournament are not something that make my life tennis life enjoyable."

Ernst is proud of the fact that the Met afforded high-school players and average hackers a change to go against the best players in the state.

"Any local player who wanted to venture in had the opportunity, and I feel good about that," he said.

But he had his critics over the years. They complained about the schedule, the traffic and the draw, which skeptics were convinced Ernst rigged to favor his son. To this day he scoffs at the notion, mentioning the years that Gordie lost.

"If anyone said it, it was unrealistic or sour grapes because the tournament director's son was playing well. Those are things you have to take," he said.

Some begrudged Ernst the money he made on the tournament, but he said that after expenses his take averaged about $2,000.

"For two months work," he added. "I figured it out one year, and it worked out to about $10 an hour. I never did it to make money. I did it because of my love of tennis and Rhode Island tournaments. In the summer I'd play tennis and go home and work the phones. People didn't see that. It was a full-time job."

Ernst promoted the Met more than any tournament director promoted any tournament in Rhode Island and regularly courted print and broadcast media.

"Publicity is great. I love it," he said, "but the publicity I've had helped hundreds of people. I accomplished a lot, and because of the recognition I could get so many things like balls and trophies."

His sons and former players helped Ernst run the Met, but the constant over the decades was his wife.

"I would not have done any of this without Rollie," he said.

Dick Ernst has compiled a remarkable record in Rhode Island sports. He played in 47 consecutive R.I. Closed tournaments and held a New England ranking for 43 years. He has coached high-school hockey and tennis since 1962. This spring with the Barrington High School boys tennis team is his 100th season as a coach: 52 tennis, 46 hockey and 2 cross-country. He has coached boys hockey at North Providence, Cranston East and North Smithfield; boys tennis at Cranston East and Barrington; girls tennis at Moses Brown and girls hockey at La Salle. He coached men's tennis at Providence College and men's and women's tennis at Rhode Island College. His three sons played for him at Cranston East, and his wife played for him at RIC.

Now it's time to slow down.

"It will be a wicked sadness . . . It has been one huge slice of my life. But it's a tremendous relief," he said of leaving the director's role.

Although the Met is changing, some things never change. This summer, Ernst will head over to "The Park", amble on to a court, his titanium-braced right knee wrapped in a peeling neoprene sleeve, and hit balls like a human backboard. Sack hopes he will enter the Met A; Ernst said he will.

"This is where I started," he said, "on dusty courts, hitting balls."

mszostak@projo.com