'Like old times': From England to Auburn, the Blaydes brothers get set for one last ride together
Billy Blaydes is a standout senior for Auburn — this season joined by his younger brother Freddy, who just transferred in from Georgia. Here's a look at what makes them an effective doubles team.
It’s just like the old days again for the Blaydes brothers.
Growing up together in Windermere, England, there wasn’t much in that local area for them in the way of youth tournaments. So as their pursuits in tennis got more and more serious, the kids traveled to tournaments three hours or more away to the other side of England, or to Scotland or Wales, or to the big cities — enduring the road together while sitting next to each other on the long car rides, and killing time together in hotel rooms before it was time to go to the courts.
Now they’re back out on the road together again, for one more ride this spring. Billy Blaydes is a senior with the Auburn men’s tennis team in his final season on the Plains, and his younger brother Freddy Blaydes transferred in from Georgia this past offseason, in part so he’d have this chance to spend a college season together with Billy.
And, of course — wouldn’t you know it? — they’ve been paired together as a doubles team for the Tigers.
“We traveled a lot as kids together,” Billy said last week, the older, imposing net player speaking a few days after Auburn opened non-conference play for the spring season. He thought back to their time growing up back home: “We did a lot of trips together at the same place, play like a few weeks there. And then as we kind of got older we started to maybe branch out and do a bit more international stuff so we were traveling separately a bit more.
“But I think the travel here (in America) is probably one of the best things about college tennis, being able to travel on the bus with the guys. Win or lose, it’s a great thing. It brings everyone close together,” Billy said. This year he gets to share that experience that he enjoys so much with his brother. “It is kind of like the old times. Obviously I hadn’t seen Freddy for like three years now, and really traveled with him, so it is fun getting away, and we usually share a room together as well, so it’s just like being back at home. It’s fun. It’s really good.”
Getting that chance to travel to different regions while competing — all expenses paid, unlike how it was their youth — is one of the perks that brought the brothers to the United States for collegiate tennis in the first place. The brothers played with an academy growing up, but it isn’t like the NCAA Division I where everything is handled by the school — and, once you turn 18 in Europe, it’s pretty much time to go pro, unless you come to the U.S. to play in college and sharpen your skills for a few more years from 18 to 22.
“College kind of gives you a nice four years to get a lot better, and you have incredible resources here — I mean, the courts, the physios, the diet, everything. So that’s kind of what America offers instead of England,” Freddy explained, sitting next to his brother at the Yarbrough Tennis Center. So at a point it became the obvious choice for both of them to head across the Atlantic, and they hired a recruiting service to get their names and tapes onto the desks of college coaches. Multiple coaches in the SEC took notice.
There was just one catch: