Ty Tucker

2009 National Coach of the Year
 15-time Big Ten Coach of the Year
 8-time ITA Midwest Region Coach of the Year
 OSU and Big Ten All-Time winningest men’s tennis coach
48 All-American selections
81 All-Big Ten selections

Ohio State/Career Record: 651-98 (.869)
Big Ten Record: 219-13 (.944)
Big Ten Tournament Record: 55-9 (.859)
NCAA Tournament Record: 62-22 (.738)

Ty Tucker, who became the head coach of the Ohio State men’s tennis program in 1999, has turned Buckeye tennis into an elite program that has maintained consistent success, shattered program records and contended for Big Ten and national titles year after year. Tucker’s reputation for delivering exceptional results has not gone unnoticed as he was promoted to Director of Tennis in the summer of 2012. While also maintaining his role as head coach of the men’s program, Tucker has provided oversight and assistance to the women’s team.

Guiding the Scarlet and Gray to 16 consecutive Big Ten regular-season titles (2006–22) and 13 B1G Tournament crowns, Tucker also has coached the program to 12 seasons of 30 or more wins.

Over his 23 seasons, Tucker had amassed a 651-98 (.869) record, which makes him the winningest head coach in Ohio State men’s tennis history and the third winningest coach in any sport in Big Ten history. In addition, the Buckeyes’ ran off an astounding 200 consecutive wins in Columbus, which was the longest home win streak in Division I sports history. Tucker had the program ranked in the Top 20 of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) poll for over 465 consecutive matches.

The 2009 ITA National Coach of the Year, Tucker has witnessed Ohio State make deep runs at the NCAA championships. As a team, the Buckeyes advanced to the final match in 2009 and 2018, the semifinals four other times and the quarterfinals a total of 14 times, while making 22 consecutive trips to the national tournament in all (2000–22). He also guided the team to the final match of the ITA Indoor Team Championships six different times and has won a pair of national titles in 2014 and 2019.

Thanks in large part to the Indoor National Championship, the 2019 team spent 13 weeks ranked No. 1 in the country. They again rolled through the Big Ten winning the regular season and tournament crowns and finished with a 32-3 record which included a 19-0 mark at home. Junior JJ Wolf started the year by winning the singles title ITA All-American Championships and spent all year ranked in the top-3 including 10 consecutive weeks at No. 1.

Perhaps one of Tucker’s proudest moments as a head coach came when he mentored senior Chase Buchanan and sophomore Blaz Rola to the 2012 NCAA Doubles Championship title in Athens, Ga. The Buckeye duo not only owned the No. 1 doubles ranking throughout the 2012 campaign, but the pair made history when they became the only doubles team in NCAA annals to win all three major collegiate championships in one season – ITA All-America Championships, USTA/ITA National Indoor Championships and NCAA Championships.

In all, Tucker has coached 22 individuals in the NCAA singles championship and 17 doubles teams. A continuing trend at Ohio State is success in doubles play. In 2004, Scott Green and Ross Wilson, Buckeye letter winners from 2003–06, concluded their collegiate career as one of only three doubles teams in the nation to win three ITA national titles. Green and Wilson also became the first tandem in the 27 years of the ITA National Indoor Championships to win consecutive titles and the first doubles team in Ohio State history to win a national title. Mikael Torpegaard and Martin Joyce became just the second Buckeye doubles team to reach the NCAA championship match when they finished runner-up in 2018. Robert Cash and Matej Vocel was the most recent doubles team to have a dominant season. The Buckeye duo won both the 2021 ITA All-American Championship and the 2021 ITA Fall National Championship and then finished runner-up in the 2022 NCAA Championship, losing in a third-set tiebreaker. They finished the year as the top-ranked doubles team in the country.

A 15-time Big Ten Coach of the Year and seven-time ITA Region IV/Midwest Region Coach of the Year recipient, Tucker has led 21 All-Americans who have garnered a total of 48 All-America honors. In addition to Buchanan and Rola’s claim to No. 1 in the doubles ranking, Tucker led Jeremy Wurtzman, the 2004 ITA/Farnsworth National Senior Co-Player of the Year, Steven Moneke (2007), Bryan Koniecko (2009), Peter Kobelt (2012), Mikael Torpegaard (2016) and JJ Wolf (2019) to the No. 1 position in the ITA singles rankings. Moneke, who lettered for the Buckeyes from 2006-09, played his way into the 2009 NCAA Singles Championship final before losing 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 to Devin Britton of Mississippi.

In the Big Ten Conference, 34 Buckeyes, including recent honorees, Chris Diaz, Hugo Di Feo, Ralf Steinbach, Mikael Torpegaard, JJ Wolf and John McNally have been named All-Big Ten recipients under Tucker’s tutelage. Additionally, six student-athletes have earned Big Ten Athlete of the Year accolades – Vince Ng (2003), Koniecko (2008, ’09), Buchanan (2010, ’11), Torpegaard (2016), Wolf (2019) and Cannon Kingsley (2021, ’22) while nine were awarded with Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors – Joey Atas (2004), Koniecko (2006), Justin Kronauge (2007), Rola (2011), Torpegaard (2015), Di Feo (2016), Wolf (2017), McNally (2018) and JJ Tracy (2021).

The 2022 season was another dominant season for the program. The Buckeyes won their 16th consecutive regular season title and was a perfect 14-0 at home. After finishing runner-up at the Big Ten Tournament, OSU won three NCAA Tournament matches at home before knocking-off rival Michigan in the NCAA Quarterfinals. Cannon Kingsley was named the Big Ten Athlete of the Year and a record four Buckeyes earned All-America honors.

In the shortened 2020 season, the Buckeyes started hot, winning four matches over top-10 ranked teams. That included a pair of wins over No. 1 ranked teams in Texas and USC, marking the first time in school history the team won twice over No. 1 ranked teams in the same season.

The 2020-21 season saw Tucker and the Buckeyes claim a share of the Big Ten East Division title and make a run to the finals of the Big Ten Tournament. The Buckeyes also beat Wake Forest at Wake Forest in the second round of the NCAA Tournament and advanced to the round of 16 for the 17th in program history.

Arguably, the most successful campaign in program history, 2009 proved to be a season of immense achievement. Not only did the Scarlet and Gray play for the national title, but they also recorded a 36-2 record for a .947 win percentage, the best single-season win percentage in program history. Two years later, Ohio State advanced to the semifinals of the NCAA tournament to finish the season with just three losses compared to 34 victories (.919). In 2013, the Buckeyes appeared in the NCAA semifinals for the third time in program history thanks to a dramatic 4-3 victory over four-time defending champion USC in the quarterfinals in Champaign, Ill. Although Ohio State fell short of its bid to claim the national title, the Buckeyes finished the season with another 30-win season (35-3).

The 2006 season was the beginning of the Buckeyes’ dominance in the Big Ten Conference. Recording a 28-2 ledger, Ohio State relinquished its second-place league standing from the previous five seasons and won the regular-season and tournament titles. The squad also received its seventh-consecutive bid to the NCAA team championship and hosted the first two rounds for the first time in team history.

Tucker is accustomed to success in tennis. A two-time All-American at Ohio State, Tucker earned three letters from 1989 to 1991 during his collegiate career. He captured the No. 1 singles position his freshman year and held it for three seasons, while also securing his place in the Buckeye record book with his dominating play, finishing with 64 career singles wins. In 2004, Tucker was inducted into the Ohio State Athletics Hall of Fame.

In 1992, Tucker decided to pursue a professional tennis career. He achieved a world ranking of No. 273 and in 1994 was ranked as high as No. 35 in the U.S. He earned significant wins over Tim Henman, Hendrik Dreekman and Sargis Sargisian and defeated Jimmy Arias to win the Novi Auto Mall Professional Tennis Challenge in Michigan. Tucker also played in more than 40 foreign tournaments between 1992 and 1995. After returning to Ohio State as an assistant coach, Tucker earned his degree in anthropology in 1998.

Tucker’s success in tennis began at an early age. As a player on the junior circuit, he established himself by accumulating nine United States Tennis Association (USTA) National Junior titles and was a tournament finalist 11 times. Tucker notched victories over Andre Agassi, Michael Chang and Jim Courier. As a student at Zanesville High School, Tucker became the only student-athlete to win the Ohio High School state title as a freshman in 1985. In the spring of 2012, Tucker was inducted into the Zanesville City Schools Hall of Fame.