Doyle expects sophomore, senior to step up, lead Tech tennis coming off undefeated season

Tech’s tennis team is going to have a hard time topping last year’s outstanding season, but it won’t stop them from trying.
Coach Kenny Doyle led the tennis team to an undefeated 8-0 record in conference play, won the Ohio Valley Conference Championship and Doyle won OVC Coach of the Year.
Since Doyle began in 2009, last season was the program’s best in a long time.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to build on last season’s success,” Doyle said.
Doyle said if the tennis team wants to improve on last year’s success, “we’ll need the new guys to step up to the plate and do that extra work on their own.”
One of the tennis players who knows what it takes is sophomore Alejandro Augusto from Madrid, Spain.
Augusto was in the top 100 tennis players in Spain and is now one of the top players in the OVC.
It’s only Augusto’s second semester at Tech, but he said he’s starting to get the hang of it.
“Last semester was my first semester here, and I was not confident,” Augusto said. “The last few matches my confidence began to come out, and I started playing much better tennis.”
Augusto said he thinks the lone senior on the team, Syrym Abdukhalikov, has prepared the team well, and with all of the young talent, this team has a good chance to repeat as OVC champs.
The pair of players haven’t waited long to make an impact this season. The team got off to an exciting start in its first tournament at the Southern Intercollegiate Tournament at the University of Georgia Sept. 7-9. Abdukhalikov and Augusto claimed a surprising 8-4 doubles victory over the second-seeded pair from the University of Florida to highlight the first day of play.
The team will head to the University of Louisville for the Louisville Invitational Sept. 21-23 and to Tulsa, Okla. for the ITA All-American Championships Sept. 29-30. For more information on Tech Tennis and all Tech Althletics, visit TTUSports.com.