This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Joseph Li, the ITA’s Feature Writer and Historical Intern this fall, recently sat down with John Frierson, the ITA Men’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame Curator who was recently inducted into the Hall of Fame in May 2026. Frierson discusses his day-to-day as the Curator, his tennis background, a lifelong affiliation with the Georgia Bulldogs and much more.

Li: Hi, John. thanks for agreeing to sit down with the ITA and give us the opportunity to talk about your journey to the position that you’re currently in.

Frierson: Sure thing. I’ve been the curator for the Hall of Fame for the last 12 years, working for both the ITA and UGA. I run the Men’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame here in Athens for the ITA and then I also spend a good chunk of my time writing articles for the UGA Athletic Department for GeorgiaDogs.com. I grew up about 500 yards from where I’m sitting right now, and I grew up playing on Georgia’s tennis courts and being a ball boy at the NCAA Tournament here. I’m a lifelong tennis player, though I didn’t play in college, but my brother, Jack, played here at Georgia and my brother, Joe, played at North Carolina. My dad taught tennis after work for years, and I was a sportswriter at newspapers for 20-odd years.

Once that industry started circling the drain a little bit, I figured I would find something else. Fortunately, I reached out to Georgia and they were nice enough to create a position for me where I’m doing the writing and taking over for legendary Georgia coach Dan Magill, who started the Hall of Fame here back in the early 1980s.

It’s kind of been a natural fit. I’ve been a lifelong Georgia tennis fan and been around the program and known the players, but also, Georgia used to host the NCAA men’s tournament every year. Not only would I be a ball-boy for that, but I got to know so many of the coaches and players. This has been just a lifelong connection and taking over as Curator was an easy fit. It’s been a nice past 12 years.

Li: What do you enjoy about both unique positions that you’re in?

Frierson: What’s funny is they’re kind of connected because they’re both about telling stories. With the Hall of Fame, obviously I’m telling the story of college tennis, both current and going back to the late 1800s. While writing for UGA, I’m doing feature stories on players or just specific things about teams. They cover a lot of the same ground, in some ways. But with tennis especially, whether I’m putting up an exhibit or looking through nominees for induction into the Hall of Fame, you’re looking at their stories just trying to capture great moments in collegiate tennis history.

Li: You were recently inducted into the ITA Men’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame in May 2026. What was that moment like for you and your family?

Frierson: Being inducted was very flattering and a great honor. It’s hard to feel worthy of something like that when you’re going in as a Contributor and when you think about the amazing careers of so many people involved in college tennis, whether players or coaches or others.

The class I went in with was Manuel Diaz, the legendary Georgia coach, John Isner, Kevin Anderson, Stevie Johnson. These guys were incredible college players, incredible pros. Then there was me.  It was a very nice moment and it didn’t really hit me until I was giving my speech. My parents were there and my wife and my brothers and seeing what it meant to my parents in that moment kind of made it even more meaningful for me.

WATCH: John Frierson’s ITA Men’s Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame Acceptance Speech

I was a good tennis player but was never great, like my brothers and my dad. I didn’t have the on-court success that that they did. But, I’ve worked hard here the last decade-plus to take over for Coach Magill and keep it interesting, keep it relevant, keep it energetic.

One of the nice things is being able to keep constantly updating the Hall of Fame and keep it interesting so that people who come by before Georgia matches regularly have something new to look at. eBay is a Curator’s best friend, because you never know what you’re going to stumble across. I remember one of the recent things I picked up was, back when John Isner was sponsored by Fila, there was like a poster, almost like made out of mesh or something. It was only like $20 or something like that. It’s the type thing you stumble across that you didn’t know existed until you go looking for it. That’s one of the fun things of my job, is trying to track down interesting little things that most people haven’t seen.

Li: Could you talk about the selection process for the Men’s Hall of Fame? Once you have the selections, how do you go about notifying the inductees? How special is that process?

Frierson: We are always accepting nominations. We gather a group of nominees – usually one or two contributors, a bunch of players, a handful of coaches and then it’s up to our voting group to select the the candidates for our next class. I’ll write up bios on each one, and then once the class is voted on, the ITA kind of handles the rest of it. I liked it here this past May, because we were hosting the NCAAs, and so I helped out a little bit, but the ITA does a great job of putting these events on, whether that’s here in Athens this past May or a couple of years ago when we did an all-Division III class in Minnesota.

Li: What does your typical day-to-day look like as the Men’s Hall of Fame Curator?

Frierson: My office is in the Hall of Fame, but not every day necessarily involves dealing with Hall of Fame stuff. I’m usually in here writing articles every day, but I also give tours to people who stop by. We’re open before every Georgia men’s and women’s match. I love giving the tours just because there’s a lot of stories to tell, whether it’s recent people or showing them some of the aluminum rackets we have that are actually close to 100 years old. We have piano-wire for string, and people getting to hold those and feel the string and they always ask the exact same question -“What what were the balls like back then? How could you play tennis with piano-wire string and the ball survive a rally?

The tours are always very gratifying because people have a lot of questions. One of the my favorite things is when people come in, we have our biggest photo, which is about five feet tall and three feet wide of John McEnroe as a freshman at Stanford playing here in the 1978 NCAA Tournament. It’s a photo of him serving and the number of people who’ve come in looking for themselves in the photo because there’s a 5,000-seat grandstand behind him.

Other people will come in looking for themselves or looking for their parents or looking for their grandparents or whatever. There’s sort of a generational thing for some of this stuff. It’s always very special when somebody whose parent or grandparent was inducted into the Hall of Fame and they can come and look at their photo and that kind of thing. Former players are often nice enough to donate things. When Stevie Johnson was here for the induction ceremony in May, he brought one of his rackets, which was nice. Years ago, when John Isner and Kevin Anderson met in the semis of the 2018 Wimbledon, afterwards they were both nice enough to donate a racket from that tournament. Getting to put that up on the wall along with a big photo of them shaking hands after the match is cool. Just those kind of things are fun.

Coming up with new photo ideas or display ideas and all that is part of how I spend my time as it relates to the Hall of Fame.

Li: How do you believe the Hall of Fame preserves and celebrates the history of college tennis?

Frierson: We sort of try to capture moments. On the wall to my right and around in this office area celebrates the history of the NCAA Tournament in Athens, because Georgia’s hosted it more than anybody else. It’s great to celebrate players, coaches and contributors, but it’s also cool celebrating moments and champions and one of the things I like to do at the end of every singles tournament is try get a racket from the winning player that we can put up in the Hall to capture that moment.

They may become Hall of Famers one day, they may not, but they’ll always be NCAA champions no matter what. Having a racket from them is cool because, like Stevie Johnson in May at the induction ceremony, we now have some of his rackets.

I love being able to tell the stories from the sport. There’s so much history to celebrate from coast to coast, both recent history and going back to the late 1800s when college tennis first existed. It’s really cool. It’s fun. I tell people, every day I come in here, it’s kind of a trip down memory lane in some form or fashion.

Li: Do you have any favorite moments or memories that stand out from your time working with the Hall of Fame?

Frierson: I mean, when I was a kid, back when we hosted the tournament every year, our family hosted UCLA’s team, which meant they came over for dinner one night. If they had a bunch of laundry to do, they’d come by and the team manager or somebody would use our washer and dryer. You build those relationships, and that was when Glenn Bassett was the head coach of UCLA, who was an all-time great coach. Those guys we’re kind of my heroes.

In the semis of the 1982 singles tournament, I believe, UCLA’s Marcel Freeman, who was just the coolest guy in the world, was playing Pepperdine’s Brad Gilbert. Well, I didn’t like Brad Gilbert as a kid, simply because he was playing for Pepperdine and I was both a George and UCLA guy. A good friend of mine that I grew up with, his family hosted Pepperdine every year. We were the two ball boys at the net for that match. I’m not even 10 years old at this point, and I refused to be on the same side of the court as Brad Gilbert. Every time the players changed sides, my friend and I would change sides, so that I would always be on Marcel’s side, and he would always be on Brad’s. I don’t know if the players ever noticed this, because it was kind of unusual. They probably didn’t because they were, hopefully, focusing on the match, but that always stood out. I remember Brad Gilbert wound up winning like five and six or something like that. I was probably more heartbroken than Marcel was.

That one’s always kind of stuck with me. In terms of a moment as the Curator, about six months ago, the Bryan brothers were in town doing a tennis exhibition at the Athens Country Club, because the Athens Country Club was celebrating its 100th anniversary. Alan Miller, who was a Hall of Fame player for Georgia, has been the director of tennis there forever, so the Bryan brothers did an exhibition against Alan and another former Georgia player. That was awesome. But the next morning, they came here because they hadn’t been back to Athens since 1998 when they had the most dominant season in college tennis history. They not only went undefeated, they lost four individual matches the entire team season. Just utterly dominant. They came over to the Hall of Fame, and the moment I opened the door, Bob has his phone out and is recording a video. The moment he’s walking through the door, he looks to his left and he goes, ‘Is that my racket on the wall?’

It was an old Wilson Pro staff from the 1990s, but he immediately recognized that it was his. He’d given it to Coach Magill right after he won the singles title. Seeing Mike and Bob’s reaction to the Hall of Fame, how excited they were to just kind of check out everything, I mean, these guys are the greatest doubles team of all-time, and to see how excited they were about being a part of that history, being back on Georgia’s courts where they had their greatest ever moments in college, I don’t know. It just really stuck with me in terms of their enthusiasm for it, and that college meant that much to them still, given how much they accomplished after college.

I have a photo of them up on the wall from their visit and it puts a smile on my face when I see it. Such nice guys, obviously phenomenal tennis players. I immediately was texting with their former Stanford coach Dick Gould, telling him how great they were at the exhibition and how great they were coming by the Hall of Fame.

That was a really cool moment.