Ex-UT ace hopes for home-court magic

As Chris Woodruff talked last week about becoming the new men’s tennis coach at the University of Tennessee, part of the Goodfriend Tennis Center where he sat was closed off due to adjacent campus dormitory construction.

That is certainly not symbolic of the attitude he hopes to have with the larger Knoxville tennis community as coach.

“I want to get the community behind us,” he said, adding that he hopes to connect with the several tennis clubs in town. “My first response is to reach out to them to get Tennessee relevant again.”

For Woodruff, the contact will be a reconnection more than a connection. The reason is that he grew up playing at these clubs and at such public facilities as Tyson Park before graduating from Bearden High School in 1991 and going on to become a major star for the Vols.

Originally from the West Hills area, the son of Robert and Dorothy Woodruff said he started playing tennis simply by hitting balls with his father as a child after his parents played at the Knoxville Racquet Club.

“It wasn’t like I was groomed or forced to play tennis, it just kind of occurred,” he said.

With a taller-than-average height like noted pro Pete Sampras as he grew up, he quickly took to the game under the guidance of a number of teaching pros, including Tommy Mozur and Carlos Garcia, among others.

He would even get up sometimes early on Saturday mornings and go down to Chattanooga to work with McCallie School coach and former Vol player Eric Voges.

“Everybody I worked with had a special connection to this program,” he said.

While playing at Tennessee in 1992 and ’93, he became the only Vol player to date to win the NCAA singles title in 1993 under coach Mike De Palmer.

He then decided to turn pro after his sophomore year, and went on to win the Canadian Open in 1997. The Davis Cup player also won a pro tournament in Newport, R.I., that year and was a quarterfinalist in the 2000 Australian Open. His highest world ranking was No. 29.

In 2002, he returned to Tennessee as a volunteer coach at the encouragement of former player and then-coach Michael Fancutt while finishing up his degree work.

He also studied closely the aspects of coaching thoroughly and decided he wanted to pursue it as a vocation, even though most college coaches do not have nearly as accomplished a playing resume as he did.

In the fall of 2006, he became associate head coach under new coach Sam Winterbotham. After Winterbotham was let go at the end of the 2017 season by new UT athletic director John Currie, Woodruff was named the head coach on May 19.

It is an honor this husband and father of five is not taking lightly, despite the unfortunate hiring circumstances for him.

“It’s an incredible opportunity and one I’m very thankful for,” he said. “Having grown up being a part of this town all my life and having played here, it’s really quite special.”

Woodruff, who has a smiling-but-emphatic manner, said he still talks with longtime colleague and friend Winterbotham regularly, although he said he doesn’t ask him about his future vocational plans.

As for his own plans, he said he is daily trying to think of ways to make the UT program consistently relevant in the SEC and nationally. Another step he has taken, he said, is to bring back a youth tennis camp this summer for the first time in several years.

He thinks the UT facilities, including the indoor Goodfriend facility and the outdoor Barksdale Stadium that was recently upgraded with new lights and other amenities, are excellent and are a positive.

He also hopes being a local person raised in West Knoxville can create an additional kind of positive light on the program, too.

“I know I have a lot of people behind me,” he said. “They want to see me do well.”