Women’s Tennis Adds Neil Kenner As Assistant Coach

[Webmaster]

Former Professional & All-American Joins SMU Staff After Coaching In Dallas For Ten Years

DALLAS (SMU) – SMU Women’s Tennis coach Kati Gyulai finalized her coaching staff with the addition of assistant coach, Neil Kenner.

Kenner joins the Mustangs after being an independent coach since January and prior to that working at the Seay Tennis Center in Dallas from 2010 to 2014. At the Seay Tennis Center, he worked as the Director of the Elite Program where he managed a team of five to eight coaches involved with the Elite Program and helped build the reputation and skills of other professionals.

He played professionally in the ATP Tour in 2006 and 2007 where he competed in the Futures and Challengers from August 2006 to January 2007, reaching the doubles final at the Kenosha, Wis. Future. More recently, Kenner competed in Main Draw of $100,000 Dallas Challenger in 2013 and 2014, making the quarterfinal round in 2014.

In 2007, he suffered a knee injury in the fourth round of qualifying at the Future in Tampa, Fla. However, that injury did spark his transition from playing to coaching.

Kenner began his collegiate career at Washington University in St. Louis. As a freshman, he played line one singles and doubles for their tennis team where he earned All-American status in both, received the Freshman Athlete of the Year Award and received the Washington University Men’s Tennis Sportsmanship Award.

After his success, he transferred to Indiana University where he was the captain of their men’s tennis team during his junior and senior years, playing on lines one through four in singles and all three doubles lines and finished his senior season with a two month winning streak in singles.

His coaching career started at the T Bar M Racquet Club in Dallas as a Teaching Professional and High Performance Coach from 2006 to 2010. After his first year with T Bar M, he became a top revenue producer for the club without taking anything away from his instructing and ran their Memorial Day Mixer in 2010 and quadrupled the attendance.

On a personal note: I know Neil Kenner, and this is a GREAT hire in the mold of a Morris (i.e. dynamic young coach with Texas ties). Kenner is young, charismatic, and is the private coach of the current top ranked women's junior in the state. He's a proven program-builder who ran the HP tennis program (elite juniors to adults) for years and has connections all over the state. I think he will not only be a good coach and recruiter, but he also has the ability to popularize SMU's tennis program and market the new tennis center to the DFW. Kudos to SMU.

[pwnyxpress]

He sounds like a good hire. Now that we have the best facilities, we need to recruit the best players.