Women’s Tennis | July 19, 2024
LOS ANGELES — The USC women’s tennis team has hired Pete Billingham to the position of associate head coach, seventh year head coach Alison Swain announced on Friday, July 20.
Billingham has served the last five seasons at Pepperdine University in an associate head coach (2022-2024) and assistant (2019-2022) capacity. Since arriving in Malibu ahead of the 2019-20 season, the Waves have gone 97-26 (.788) overall. They were the NCAA runner-up in 2021 and finished with a #3 national ranking. Pepperdine made the NCAA quarterfinals in 2022 and 2023; both times, the Waves ended the season ranked in the top 10 of the final ITA polls. In 2024, the Waves went 21-7 and reached the NCAA team semifinals, finishing the season at No. 6 in the polls.
Before arriving at Pepperdine, Billingham was the Director of Tennis at the Saddlebrook Tennis Academy in Wesley Chapel, Florida. He started his coaching career there in 2012 and was promoted to head of women’s tennis in 2014 before eventually taking over the Director of Tennis role in 2018, overseeing the full-time academy. The academy consisted of 75 ITF-ranked juniors and ATP/WTA touring pros including the likes of Alexander Zverev, John Isner, Hubert Hurkacz, Dominic Koefer, Denis Kudla and more. In 2018, the International Tennis Federation contracted Billingham to be part of the Grand Slam Development Fund tour, in which he worked with multiple juniors ranked in the top 10 in the world.
During his time at Saddlebrook, Billingham worked and traveled with multiple high-profile players, including future Pepperdine Wave Luisa Stefani, who was ranked #10 in the world (and went on to a #2 NCAA singles ranking). Others he worked with included Liam Draxl (ranked #10 in the world and the #1 NCAA singles player), Layne Sleeth (ranked #36 in the world) and Francesca Di Lorenzo (ranked #11 in the world (and the #1 NCAA singles player).
Billingham has coached multiple times at all four grand slams (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open) and has traveled to over 100 ITF tournaments across the globe.
Billingham graduated from Coastal Carolina University in 2012 with a political science degree, where he ranked #82 in the country.
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