Men’s Tennis Central: #4 Tennessee at #5 TCU

FORT WORTH, Texas – The fourth-ranked Tennessee men's tennis team is set for its first road match of the 2022 dual slate, as it travels to The Lone Star State to face the fifth-ranked TCU Horned Frogs Sunday at 1 p.m. ET.

Tennessee (2-0) visits the state of Texas for the first time since March 2019, facing a TCU (2-0) squad that opens the year with nine consecutive home matches.

Live stats for Sunday's match, which will be played indoors at the Bayard H. Friedman Tennis Center, can be found here. No live streaming of the match will be available.

LAST TIME OUT
In a season-opening home doubleheader against ETSU Wednesday, Tennessee logged 7-0 and 4-0 wins over the Buccaneers. Freshman Conor Gannon clinched both match points for the Vols as the wins gave UT a 2-0 start to the year for a tenth consecutive season.

SCOUTING TCU
Sunday's match will be the eighth all-time meeting between the Vols and Horned Frogs, with UT leading the series with a record of 6-1. The teams' first meeting came in 1983, a 5-4 Vols win.

The two squads met last season in Champaign, Ill., for the 2021 ITA Indoor National Championships. The Vols took that match, 4-3, as VFL and then graduate student Luca Wiedenmann became the 10^th-ever Vol to earn 100 career singles victories, before Giles Hussey clinched match point for the Big Orange.

TCU opened the 2022 season Wednesday with a 6-1 victory over the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). The Frogs went on to defeat Florida Friday evening, 4-3. The Horned Frogs finished the 2021 dual season with an overall record of 19-8, including a 7-1 mark at home.

Sunday will be the second consecutive meeting between the two programs in which each is ranked inside the top 10. Last season's match featured the No. 10 Vols, while TCU was ranked third.

A win for the Vols would mark their first top-five victory since taking down top-ranked Florida in the 2021 SEC Tournament Championship match.

DOUBLES DUBS
The nation's sixth-ranked doubles pair of Shunsuke Mitsui and Emile Hudd improved to 13-1 as a doubles pair Wednesday. With a pair of victories together versus ETSU, Hudd is now 15-2 in doubles, while Mitsui improves to 18-2 this season.

PAT REACHES 60
With a 6-4 doubles victory over ETSU's Hugo Lobo/Dimitri Badra alongside Adam Walton in Wednesday's second match, Pat Harper, a senior, earned the 60^th doubles win of his Tennessee career.

MILESTONE IN SIGHT FOR AUSSIE
In October, Walton earned his 100th career singles win to become the 11th-ever Vol to reach the century mark in career singles triumphs. With the 6-4 victory over ETSU's Lobo/Badra Wednesday, with Harper, Walton stands just 16 doubles victories away from 100, which would make him the sixth Vol in program history to accrue 100 career doubles and singles wins.

FORT WORTH FACTS
• 60 percent of America's paper money is printed at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing Western Currency Facility in Fort Worth.

• Fort Worth is home to the oldest stock show and rodeo in the country—the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show.

• The Fort Worth Herd is the world's only twice-daily cattle drive, held every day at 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. in the Fort Worth Stockyards.

UP NEXT
The Vols have a week off, before returning to action with a second home doubleheader of the season as they face tenth-ranked Wake Forest and the Golden Eagles of Tennessee Tech Sunday, Jan. 23 at Noon and 4 p.m. ET, respectively.

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Players Mentioned

Conor Gannon

Pat Harper

Emile Hudd

Giles Hussey

Shunsuke Mitsui

Adam Walton

Luca Wiedenmann

University of Tennessee Athletics