Auburn men's tennis signs Illinois transfer Tyler Bowers
Here's what the Tigers are getting out of a veteran collegiate player who has plenty of experience — and who is the brother of women's team standout Ashton Bowers.
Auburn men’s tennis picked up a new piece Monday as the program turns toward next season — and it comes from a familiar family.
Auburn announced it has signed Illinois transfer Tyler Bowers, a rising redshirt senior who shined on the doubles court this past season for an Illini team which finished the year with a top-15 seed in the NCAA Tournament and a run to the Super Regional round.
Bowers is the brother of Auburn women’s tennis standout Ashton Bowers.
He’ll come to Auburn with one year of eligibility remaining, and plugs into a gap of experienced veteran players on the 2026-27 roster.
“Auburn was definitely a spot that was on my mind,” Bowers said, of going into the transfer portal. “I mean, being that my sister was here, I had been over to Auburn at least. I’d seen the facilities, I’d seen the campus. I’d seen the whole city in itself. … Then getting to know the coaches through the whole process, I really, really felt like I had a strong connection with the coaches, and their outlook on where the team is going to go, and just the outlook next season — being that I only have one year — was really good. And it’s something that I wanted to be a part of.”
Bowers was rated as a four-star prospect by Tennis Recruiting coming out of the class of 2022.
He was a regular starter for Illinois on Court 1 in doubles in each of the past two years, racking up 30 doubles wins in two seasons. His entrance into the transfer portal came after his his number of singles starts drop from 28 to four from two seasons ago to this past season.
And his arrival at Auburn comes after the Tigers lost several key players who were upperclassmen or rising upperclassmen:
Senior Billy Blaydes departs to graduation;
Fourth-year player Nicholas Heng has a year of eligibility remaining but departed Auburn amicably to play it at Michigan and pursue a Master’s degree there that Auburn doesn’t offer;
Rising junior Hamza Nasridinov entered the transfer portal and has signed with Texas A&M.
Before Bowers signed, Auburn had just one player who’d be a senior on the 2026-27 roster in Freddy Blaydes. Now the Tigers have two seniors for next year.
Auburn’s other newcomers for next season are signees Duje Markovina, from Croatia by way of Australia, and Patrik Munkhammar, Sweden’s top-ranked junior. They’ll be freshmen next season in their first years of collegiate tennis.
“From what I’ve seen from the guys that we have coming in and the guys that are staying, I think we have an incredible base in terms of the talent we have,” Bowers said.
Here’s more of what Bowers had to say about committing to Auburn, how he describes his game, what he hopes to gain from joining the Tigers, and what Auburn hopes to gain from adding him: