The Auburn men's tennis team will be in action on the road this weekend, facing Old Dominion on Saturday morning and taking on South Florida on Sunday morning in matches played indoors at the Duckworth Family Tennis Facility in Clemson, S.C. Both matches are scheduled to start at 9 a.m. CT. Fans can follow live scoring and video at ClemsonTigers.com.
The Tigers, 1-0 after a 6-1 season opening victory over Samford, look to improve their non-conference record with this pair of neutral-site matches. Auburn got singles win in its opener from Tyler Stice, Tad Maclean, Jan Galka, Finn Murgett and Maxwell Giddens, and also captured the doubles point.
"I'm hoping that we have a little bit of the edge going into the Old Dominion match," Auburn head coach Bobby Reynolds said. "They haven't played a warm-up match yet, so I'm hoping when we step out on the court we have a little bit of the edge and the butterflies are gone and they have a few of them. They're a tough team. Their No. 1 doubles team (Luca Maldoner and Nicola Vidal) is ranked 25 in the country this year and has played together for a while. Last year, they were top 40 when we had to shut down the season, so they're historically very tough one to six. It will be interesting to see; they play a lot indoors also, so I wouldn't say we have a huge advantage there. I'm looking for our guys to come out just like they did and be ready to go for a battle.
"On Sunday, we're playing USF and they're really strong. They just had a tough one with Florida to open. They have doubles teams ranked 21 (Rithvik Bollipalli/Jacob Wojcik) and 38 (Chase Ferguson/Pierre Luquet); they're a team full of fifth-year seniors, so guys who have been doing this for several years together and that's all six of their guys.
"For us, we're looking obviously to always take the doubles point. These are two tough teams to take the doubles point against, but it's not something unattainable for us. I love our doubles teams one, two and three. I think we can put our threes at one and our ones at three – we can mix and match because they are so strong across the board. Then, in singles, maybe mixing it up at one or two of our positions, maybe changing some guys in that weren't available this weekend, and maybe moving a couple guys up or down based off what we saw this week."
The SEC preseason poll was released Friday, with Florida picked to win the conference. The Tigers were listed at 12th by the league's coaches.
Auburn will return home on Sunday, January 31, for a 1 p.m. match against Georgia Tech. All Auburn home tennis action is at the Yarbrough Tennis Center (1717 Richland Road, Auburn) and fans wearing face coverings are welcome to attend any matches played outdoors.