WACO, Texas – Auburn’s Billy Blaydes and Will Nolan will begin their quest for a title at the NCAA Doubles Championship on Wednesday at the Hurd Tennis Center in Waco, Texas.
The Tiger duo is one of 32 doubles teams that qualified to play for the national title. One round will be played each day from Wednesday through Sunday, when the championship match will take place. The event is a single elimination format competition.
Blaydes and Nolan earned their bid to the championship by becoming the ITA Southern Region Doubles Champions in October. After four wins to reach the finals including an upset of the tournament’s two-seed, Blaydes and Nolan were set to face the top-ranked doubles team in the nation, Petar Jovanovic and Benito Sanchez Martinez, in the finals. Blaydes and Nolan won the first set in a tiebreaker before Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez responded with a 6-4 win in the second set. The veteran Tigers then won a tight third-set tiebreaker 11-9 to clinch the title.
With the victory, Blaydes and Nolan become the first Auburn doubles team to win the Southern Regional title since Tim Puetz and Alex Stamchev in 2009.
This week will mark the first appearance in the championship for both Blaydes and Nolan, but Auburn has had a lot of recent success in the NCAA Doubles Championship as Tad Maclean and Finn Murgett reached the finals of the event in 2021 and the quarterfinals in 2022.
The Auburn pair will face Stanford’s Nicholas Godsick and Samir Banerjee in Wednesday’s opening round at 3:30 p.m. CT.
Television coverage of the NCAA Doubles Championship will be available on ESPN+. Live scoring for each match will also be available online at ioncourt.com.
