For former men’s tennis player Jon Davis, his four years playing for N.C. State could be described as night and day. He made the ACC Honor Roll in 2003 and was a letter-winner all four years from 2001-2004.
Despite the accolades he collected, the team’s loss the first two years took a toll on Davis, until coach Jon Choboy arrived for the 2002-2003 season.
Davis has since graduated from State and is still close to the program. Even when he was in high school in Tennessee, he wanted to return to North Carolina. He said that he felt at home here.
His love for North Carolina was here to stay when he arrived on State’s campus, but his first two seasons playing under former-coach Eric Hayes were a different story.
“My first two years, we were toward the bottom end in the ACC,” Davis said. “There were coaching staffs that needed to be changed. We were one of the few schools in the ACC that did not have an indoor facility, so it was like our program was kind of stuck. We weren’t doing a whole lot at that time.”
For other people, Davis’ most memorable moment would probably not be seen as a positive.
According to Davis, the senior leadership on the team for his sophomore year was nonexistent, which contributed to his debating whether or not to continue playing tennis.
“It so happened, the spring of my sophomore year, there was a change in coaches,” Davis said. “That spring of my sophomore year was one of the more memorable seasons, because it was like we missed a lot of time having a losing record, and no one really cared. It made me want to stay around for the next two years to play tennis.”
Asked if he felt that the school ignored the condition of the program, Davis said he didn’t feel the program was ignored.
“I don’t know if I would use the word ‘ignored,’ but you pay more attention to the teams that are doing well,” he said. “For a while, tennis wasn’t producing and then came a lot of support from the Wolfpack Club and people that made things happen with the indoor facility.”
Although the J.W. Isenhour Tennis Complex wasn’t completed for almost two years, Davis said he knew it was going to happen.
“The funding was there, and they were starting construction,” he said. “That was kind of a symbol of the initiative of N.C. State putting effort toward improving the tennis program, and at the same time the baseball program. That was a big step for the tennis team to have that new, nice facility that they got.”
The first season under coach Jon Choboy resulted in a 5-17 record in 2003. But despite the losing record, the impact Choboy left was evident to Davis. “It was definitely a good transition. My junior year, there were only five players recruited and our sixth guy was actually a walk-on,” Davis said. “We had to go get a walk-on for our No. 6. It was refreshing to have Choboy. He came from a successful career at Brown, and he brought a new attitude — a new winning attitude to the team.”
Davis said he learned a lot from playing tennis, and he applied what he’s learned to other aspects of his life.
“The discipline of being at practice every day and working out every morning — in some ways, work is not quite as challenging as a 6:30 a.m. workout two days a week,” he said.
Davis still lives in Raleigh close to campus. He has a house and shares it with two current players and Will Shaw, his teammate and grad student. He works at Wachovia — his first job out of college.
Though Davis has played tennis for most of his life, he has no intention of coaching tennis and now just plays for fun.
“Just playing enough tennis growing up and playing through college, I’m more interested being in the business world now than in the tennis world,” Davis said. “I would like to do it more as enjoyment now. I’m in a league here in Raleigh and just doing it for enjoyment and not as work anymore.”
